The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman

Giddy’s voice is developing into a really fine contralto & she has the work in her to become an artist, I think & will turn out one of the tortoises who outstrip the hares. Percy and Norah are spending the winter in London (at Kensington) – and we can get round by train in half an hour; so I often see them and the dear little man. Do you remember the Miss Chases – two pleasant maiden ladies who took tea with us once in Philadelphia & talked about Sojourner Truth? One of the sisters is in London this winter & has been several times to see us. The birds are beginning to sing very sweetly here – & our room is full of the perfume of spring flowers – indoor ones. Did dear Bee tell you, in the long letter she once wrote you, how much she loved the Swiss ladies with whom she made her home while in Berne? A more tender & beautiful love and sorrow than that with which they cherish the memory of her never grew in any heart. I think you will like to see some of their letters – please return them, for they are very precious to me (the little matters they thank me for are some of dear Bee’s things which I sent them for tokens). Love to your sister & brother. How are Mr. Marvin & Mr. Burroughs? Best love from us all. Good-bye, dear Friend.

Anne Gilchrist.

LETTER LXI

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

12 Well RoadHampsteadMay 8th, ’82.

My Dearest Friend:

Herby went to David Bognes38 about a week ago: he himself was out, but H. saw the head man, who reported that the sale of “Leaves of Grass” was progressing satisfactorily. I hope you have received, or will receive, tangible proof of the same. Bognes is a young publisher, but, I believe from what I hear, a man to be relied on. His father was the publisher of my husband’s first literary venture & behaved honourably. Herby brought away for me a copy of the new edition. I like the type like that of ’73, & the pale green leaf it is folded in so to speak. I find a few new friends to love – perhaps I have not yet found them all out. But you must not expect me to take kindly to any changes in the titles or arrangement of the old beloved friends. I love them too dearly – every word & look of them – for that. For instance, I want “Walt Whitman” instead of “Myself” at the top of the page. Also my own longing is always for a chronological arrangement, if change at all there is to be; for that at once makes biography of the best kind. What deaths, dear Friend! As for me, my heart is already gone over to the other side of the river, so that sometimes I feel a kind of rejoicing in the swelling of the ranks of the great company there. Darwin, with his splendid day’s work here gently closed; Rossetti, whose brilliant genius had got entangled in a premature physical decay, so that his day’s work was over too! In a letter to me, William, who was the best, most faithful & loving of brothers to him, says, “I doubt whether he would ever have regained that energy of body & concentration of mental resource which could have enabled him to resume work at his full & wonted power. Without these faculties at ready command my dear Gabriel would not have been himself.” Edward Carpenter’s father, too, is gone, but he at a ripe age without disease – sank gently.

The photographs I enclose are but poor suggestions – please give one to Mrs. Whitman with my love, or if you prefer to keep both, I will send her others. Does the idea ever come into your head, dear Friend, of spending a little time this summer or autumn in your English home at Hampstead?

Herby is well and working happily. So is Grace. Little grandson & his parents away in Worcestershire.

It is indescribably lovely spring weather here just now. A carpenter near us has a sky-lark in a cage which sings as jubilantly as if it were mounting into the sky, & is so tame that when he takes it out of the cage to wash its little claws, which are apt to get choked up with earth, in warm water, it breaks out singing in his hand! Love from us all, dearest Friend. Good-bye.

Anne Gilchrist.

Affectionate greetings to your brother & sister & Hattie & Jessie.

Do you ever see Mr. Marvin? If so, give our love, we hope to see him one day.

LETTER LXII

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

Keats CornerWell Rd., Hampstead, LondonNov. 24, ’82.

Dearest Friend:

You have long ere this, I hope, received Herby’s letter telling of the safe arrival of the precious copy of “Specimen Days,” with the portraits: it makes me very proud. Your father had a fine face too – there is something in it that takes hold of me & that seems to be a kind of natural background or substratum to the radiant sweetness of that other sacred & beloved face completing your parentage. I like heartily too the new portraits of you: they are all wanted as different aspects: but the two that remain my favourites are the portrait taken about 30 without coat of any kind, and the one you sent me in ’69 next to those I love these two latest – & in some respects better, because they are the Walt I saw & had such happy hours with. The second copy of book & my lending one, has come safe – too – and the card that told of your attack of illness, & the welcome news of your recovery in the Paper; & I have been fretting with impatience at my own dumbness – but tied to as many hours a day writing as I could possibly manage, at my little book now (last night) – finished, all but proofs, so that I can take my pleasure in “Specimen Days” at last; but before doing that must have a few words with you, dearest Friend. First a gossip. Do you remember Maggie Lesley? She came to see us on her way to Paris, where she is working all alone & very earnestly to get through training as an artist – then going to start in a studio of her own in Philadelphia. She, like my mother’s sister, are to me fine, lovable samples of American women – in whom, I mean, I detect, like the distinctive aroma of a flower, something special – that is American – a decisive new quality to old-world perceptions. Herby is working away still chiefly at the Consuelo picture – has got a very beautiful model to-day sitting to him. His summer work was down in Warwickshire, making sketches – & very charming ones they are, of George Eliot’s native scenes – one of a garden-nook – up steep, old, worn stone steps bordered with flowers that is enticing – it will make a lovely background for a figure picture. – Giddy’s voice is growing in richness & strength – & she works with all her heart, hoping one day to be a real artist vocally – in church & oratorio music. She will not have power or dramatic ability for opera – nor can I wish that she had; there are so many thorns with the roses in that path. I fear you will be a loser by Bogne’s bankruptcy. Did I tell you that among our friends one of your warmest admirers is Henry Holmes, the great violinist (equal [to] Joachim some think – we among them). Per. & wife & little grandson all well. My love to brother & sister & to Hattie [&] Jessie. Good-bye, dear Walt. I hope to write more & better soon.

Anne Gilchrist.

Greetings to the Staffords.

LETTER LXIII

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

12 Well Rd.HampsteadJan. 27, ’83.

It is not for want of thinking of you, dear Walt, that I write but seldom: for indeed my thoughts are chiefly occupied with you & your other self – your Poems – & with struggles to say a few words that I think want saying about them; that might help some to their birthright who now stand off, either ignorant or misapprehending.

We all go on much as usual.

Feb. 13. I wonder if you will like a true story of Lady Dilke that I heard the other day – I do: It was before her marriage. She was a handsome young heiress, a daring horsewoman, fond of hunting. There was a man, weakly & of good position, who had behaved very basely & cruelly to a young girl in her neighbourhood, & when (as is the case in England) half the county was assembled on the hunting field, Lady D. faced him & said in a voice that could be heard afar, “Sir you are a black-guard, & if these gentlemen had the right spirit in them they would horsewhip you.” He looked at her with effrontery & made a mocking bow. “But,” she continued, “since they won’t, I will” – and she cut him across the face with her riding whip; upon which he turned and rode off the field, like a dog with his tail between his legs, & reappeared in that neighbourhood no more. She was a woman much beloved – died at the birth of her first child (from too much chloroform having been given her). Her husband was heart-broken. I see you, too, are having floods. With us it pours five days out of seven, & so in Germany & France. We have made the acquaintance of Arabella Buckley, who has just written an interesting article about Darwin, whom she knew well, for the Century. She says his was the most entirely beautiful & perfect nature she ever came in contact with. How I wish we could have a glimpse of each other, dear Friend – half an hour talk – nay, a good long look & a hand-shake. Herby is overhead painting in his studio – such a pleasant room. How is John Burroughs? We owe him a letter & thanks for a good art. on Carlyle. Love to you, dearest friend.

Hearty remembrances to your brother & sister & Hattie & Jessie.

A. G.

LETTER LXIV

HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

Keats CornerWell Road, Hampstead, London, EnglandApril 29th, ’83.

My Dear Walt:

Your card to hand last night, with its sad account of dear Mrs. Stafford’s health; but what the doctor says is cheering. I wonder, though, what the doctor would call good weather – mild spring, I suppose.

Very glad, my dear old Walt, to see your strong familiar handwriting again; it does one good, it’s so individual that it is next to seeing you. Right glad to hear of your good health – had an idea that you were not so well again this winter. John Burroughs was very violent against my intaglio; on the other hand, Alma Tadema – our great painter here – liked it very much. I take violent criticism pretty philosophically, now that I see how unreliable it nearly always is. John Burroughs has got a fixed idea about your personality, and that is that the top of your head is a foot high and any portrait that doesn’t develop the “dome” is no portrait. – Curious what eyes a man may have for everything except a picture. I finished lately a life-size portrait of James Simmons, J.P., a hunting (fox) squire of the old school – such a fine old fellow. My portrait represents him standing firmly, in a scarlet hunting-coat well stained with many a wet chase, his great whip tucked under his arm whilst buttoning on his left glove, white buckskin trousers in shade relieving the scarlet coat, black velvet hunting cap, dark rich blue background to qualify and cool the scarlet. I wish you could see it. Then I have painted a subject “The Good Gray Poet’s Gift.” I have long meant to build up something of you from my studies, adding colour. You play a prominent part in this picture – seated at table bending over a nosegay of flowers, poetizing, before presenting them to mother. I am standing up bending over the tea-pot, with the kettle, filling it up; opposite you sits Giddy; out of the window a pretty view of Cannon place, Hampstead. Mater thinks it a pretty picture and a good likeness of you, just as you used to sit at tea with us at 1729 N. 22nd St. Now I am going out for a stroll on Hampstead Heath. Have just come in from a long ramble over the Heaths – a lovely soft spring day, innumerable birds in full song. I think J. B. is right when he says that your birds are more plaintive than ours – it’s nature’s way of compensating us for a loss of sunshine: what would England be without the merry lark, the very embodiment of cheeriness. Are not the Carlyle & Emerson letters interesting? It seems to me to be one of the most beautiful and pathetic things in literature, C’s fondness for E. But all Englishmen, I must tell you, are not grumblers like Carlyle; he stands quite alone in that quality – look at Darwin!

I should be grateful for another postcard. With all love,

Herb. Gilchrist.

LETTER LXV

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

Keats CornerHampsteadMay 6, ’83.

Dearest Friend:

I feel as if this beautiful spring morning here in England must send you greetings through me. Our sunny little mound of garden, which runs down toward the south, is fragrant with hyacinths and wall-flowers (beautiful, tawny, reddish, yellow fellows laden with rich perfume) – and at the bottom is a big old cherry tree – one mass of snowy blossom; in a neighbour’s gay garden & beyond is a distant glimpse of some tall elms just putting on their first tender green: our little breakfast room where I always sit of a morning opens with glass doors into this garden. Herby is gone with the “Sunday Tramps,” of whom he is a member, for a ten or fifteen-mile walk. 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 pussy & 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 CornerHampstead, 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 Türbner’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 coarseness 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 coarseness 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 glass – & 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 CornerHampsteadOct. 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 massive 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 CornerHampsteadApril 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

HampsteadMay 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 Grass.” 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 Grass”. 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.