The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman

Anne Gilchrist.

50 Marquis Road

London

Camden Sqr. N. W.

LETTER VI

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

50 Marquis Road, Camden Sqre.London, N. W.,January 24, ’72.

Dear Friend:

I send you photographs of my oldest and youngest children, I wish I had some worth sending of the other two. That of myself done in 1850 is a copy of a daguerrotype. The recent one was taken just a week or so before I broke down in my long illness & when I was struggling against a terrible sense of inward prostration; so it has not my natural expression, but I think you will like to have [it] rather than none, & the weather here is too gloomy for there to be any chance of a good one if I were to try again. Your few words lifted a heavy weight off me. Very few they are, dear friend: but knowing that I may give to every word you speak its fullest, truest meaning, the more I brood over them the sweeter do they taste. Still I am not as happy & content as I thought I should be if I could only know my words reached you & were welcome to you, – but restless, anxious, impatient, looking so wistfully towards the letters each morning – above all, longing, longing so for you to come – to come & see if you feel happy beside me: no more this painful struggle to put myself into words, but to let what I am & all my life speak to you. Only so can you judge whether I am indeed the woman capable of rising to the full height of great destiny, of justifying & fulfilling your grand thoughts of women. And see my faults, flaws, shortcomings too, dear Friend. I feel an earnest wish you should do this too that there may be the broad unmovable foundation-rock of perfect truth and candour for our love. I do not fear. I believe in a large all-accepting, because all-comprehending, love, a boundless faith in growth & development – in your judging “not as the judge judges but as the sunshine falling around me.” To have you in the midst of us! we clustered round you, shone upon, vivified, strengthened by your presence, surrounding you with an atmosphere of love & cheerful life.

When I wrote to you in Nov. I was in lodgings in London, having just accomplished the difficult task of finding a house for us in London, where rents are so high. And I have succeeded better than I anticipated, for we find this a comfortable, dear, little home – small, indeed, but not so small as to interfere with health or comfort, and at rent that I may safely undertake. My Husband was taken from us too young to be able to have made any provision for his children. I have a little of my own – about £80 a year; & for the rest depend upon my Mother, whose only surviving child I am. And she, by nature generous & self-denying as well as prudent, has never made anything but a pleasure of this & as long as she was able to see to her own affairs, was such a capital manager that she used to spare me about £150 out of an income of £350. But now though she retains her faculties in a wonderful degree for her years (just upon 86), she is no longer able to do this & has put the management of the whole into my hands. And I, feeling that she needs, and ought to have, now an easier scale of expenditure at Colne, have to manage a little more cleverly still to make a less sum serve for us. But I succeed capitally, dear friend – do not want a better home, never get behind hand & find it no hardship, but quite the contrary to have to spend a good deal of time & pains in domestic management. And then, just to help me through at the right moment, dear Percy11 obtained in November a good opening in some large copper & iron mining & smelting works in South Wales at a salary upon which he can comfortably live; & he likes his work well – writes very cheerfully – lodges in a farmhouse in the midst of grand scenery, within a walk of the sea. So this enables me to give the girls a turn in education, for hitherto they have had hardly any teaching but mine. And I chose this part because there is a capital day school for them handy. And Herby12 walks in to the best drawing school in London & is very diligent and happy at his work. His bent is unmistakably strong. It was well I have had to be so busy this autumn & winter, dear Walt, for I suffered keenly, sometimes overwhelmingly, through the delay in my letters’ reaching you. What caused it? And when did you get the Sept. & Oct. letters & did you get the two copies that I, baffled & almost despairing, sent off in Nov.? Good-bye, dear Friend.

Annie Gilchrist.

LETTER VII 13

WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST

(Washington, D. C.)Feb. 8 ’72.

I send by same mail with this my latest piece copied in a newspaper – and write you just a line. I suppose you only received my former letters (two) – I ought to have written something about your children (described to me in your letter of last summer – [July 23d] which I have just been reading again.) Dear boys and girls – how my heart goes out to them.

Did I tell you that I had received letters from Tennyson, and that he cordially invites me to visit him? Sometimes I dream of coming to Old England, on such visit. – & thus of seeing you & your children – But it is a dream only.

I am still living here in employment in a Government office. My health is good. Life is rather sluggish here – yet not without the sunshine. Your letters too were bright rays of it. I am going on to New York soon, to stay a few weeks, but my address will still be here. I wrote lately to Mr. Rossetti quite a long letter. Dear friend, best love & remembrance to you & to the young folk.

LETTER VIII

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

50 Marquis Rd.Camden Sq. N. W.April 12th, ’72.

Dear Friend:

I was to tell you about my acquaintanceship with Tennyson, which was a pleasant episode in my life at Haslemere. Hearing of the extreme beauty of the scenery thereabouts & specially of its comparative wildness & seclusion, he thought he would like to find or build a house, to escape from the obtrusive curiosity of the multitudes who flock to the Isle of Wight at certain seasons of the year. He is even morbidly sensitive on this point & will not stir beyond his own grounds from week’s end to week’s end to avoid his admiring or inquisitive persecutors. So, knowing an old friend of mine, he called on me for particulars as to the resources of the neighbourhood. And I, a good walker & familiar with every least frequent spot of hill & dale for some miles round, took him long ambles in quest of a site. Very pleasant rambles they were; Tennyson, under the influence of the fresh, outdoor, quite unconstrained life in new scenery & with a cheerful aim, shaking off the languid ennuyé air, as of a man to whom nothing has any longer a relish – bodily or mental – that too often hangs about him. And we found something quite to his mind – a coppice of 40 acres hanging on the south side two thirds of the way up a hill some 1000 ft. high so as to be sheltered from the cold & yet have the light, dry, elastic hill air – & with, of course, a glorious outlook over the wooded weald of Sussex so richly green & fertile & looking almost as boundless as the great sweep of sky over it – the South Downs to Surrey Hills & near at hand the hill curving round a fir-covered promontory, standing out very black & grand between him & the sunset. Underfoot too a wilderness of beauty – fox gloves (I wonder if they grow in America) ferns, purple heath &c. &c. I don’t suppose I shall see much more of him now I have left Haslemere, though I have had very friendly invitations; for I am a home bird – don’t like staying out – wanted at home and happiest there. And I should not enjoy being with them in the grand mansion half so much as I did pic-nicing in the road & watching the builders as we did. It is pleasant to see T – with children – little girls at least – he does not take to boys but one of my girls was mostly on his knee when they were in the room & he liked them very much. His two sons are now both 6 ft. high. I have received your letters of March 20 from Brooklyn: but the one you speak of as having acknowledged the photograph never came to hand – a sore disappointment to me, dear Friend. I can ill afford to lose the long & eagerly watched for pleasure of a letter. If it seems to you there must needs be something unreal, illusive, in a love that has grown up entirely without the basis of personal intercourse, dear Friend, then you do not yourself realize your own power nor understand the full meaning of your own words, “whoso touches this, touches a man” – “I have put my Soul & Body into these Poems.” Real effects imply real causes. Do you suppose that an ideal figure conjured up by her own fancy could, in a perfectly sound, healthy woman of my age, so happy in her children, so busy & content, practical, earnest, produce such real & tremendous effect – saturating her whole life, colouring every waking moment – filling her with such joys, such pains that the strain of them has been well nigh too much even for a strong frame, coming as it does, after twenty years of hard work?

Therefore please, dear Friend, do not “warn” me any more – it hurts so, as seeming to distrust my love. Time only can show how needlessly. My love, flowing ever fresh & fresh out of my heart, will go with you in all your wanderings, dear Friend, enfolding you day and night, soul & body, with tenderness that tries so vainly to utter itself in these poor, helpless words, that clings closer than any man’s love can cling. O, I could not live if I did not believe that sooner or later you will not be able to help stretching out your arms towards me & saying “Come, my Darling.” When you get this will you post me an American newspaper (any one you have done with) as a token it has reached you – & so on at intervals during your wanderings; it will serve as a token that you are well, & the postmark will tell me where you are. And thus you will feel free only to write when you have leisure & inclination – & I shall be spared [the] feeling I have when I fancy my letters have not reached you – as if I were so hopelessly, helplessly cut off from you, which is more than I can stand. We all read American news eagerly too. The children are so well & working on with all their might. The school turns out more what I desire for them than I had ventured to hope. Good-bye, dearest Friend.

Ann Gilchrist.

LETTER IX

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

50 Marquis Rd.Camden, Sqre.June 3d, 1872.

Dear Friend:

The newspapers have both come to hand & been gladly welcomed. I shall realize you on the 26th sending living impulses into those young men, with results not to cease – their kindled hearts sending back response through glowing eyes that will be warmer to you than the June sunshine. Perhaps, too, you will have pleasant talks with the eminent astronomers there. Prof. Young, who is so skilful a worker with that most subtle of tidings from the stars, the spectroscope – always, it seems hitherto bringing word of the “vast similitude that interlocks all,” nay, of the absolute identity of the stuff they are made of with the stuff we are made of. The news from Dartmouth that too, is a great pleasure.

It has been what seems to me a very long while since last writing, because it has been a troubled time within & what I wrote I tore up again, believing it was best, wisest so. You said in your first letter that if you had leisure you could write one that “would do me good & you too”; write that letter dear Friend after you have been to Dartmouth14– for I sorely need it. Perhaps the letters that I have sent you since that first, have given you a feeling of constraint towards me because you cannot respond to them. I will not write any more such letters; or, if I write them because my heart is so full it cannot bear it, they shall not find their way to the Post. But do not, because I give you more than friendship, think that it would not be a very dear & happy thing to me to have friendship only from you. I do not want you to write what it is any effort to write – do not ask for deep thoughts, deep feelings – know well those must choose their own time & mode – but for the simplest current details – for any thing that helps my eyes to pierce the distance & see you as you live & move to-day. I dearly like to hear about your Mother – want to know if all your sisters are married, & if you have plenty of little nephews & nieces – I like to hear anything about Mr. O’Connor15 & Mr. Burroughs,16 towards both of whom I feel as toward friends. (Has Mr. O’Connor succeeded in getting practically adopted his new method of making cast steel? Percy17 being a worker in the field of metallurgy makes me specially glad to hear about this.) Then, I need not tell you how deep an interest I feel in American politics & want to know if you are satisfied with the result of the Cincinnati Convention & what of Mr. Greely?18 & what you augur as to his success – I am sure dear friend, if you realize the joy it is to me to receive a few words from you – about anything that is passing in your thoughts & around – how beaming bright & happy the day a letter comes & many days after – how light hearted & alert I set about my daily tasks, it would not seem irksome to you to write. And if you say, “Read my books, & be content – you have me in them,” I say, it is because I read them so that I am not content. It is an effort to me to turn to any other reading; as to highest literature what I felt three years ago is more than ever true now, with all their precious augmentations. I want nothing else – am fully fed & satisfied there. I sit alone many hours busy with my needle; this used to be tedious; but it is not so now – for always close at hand lie the books that are so dear, so dear, I brooding over the poems, sunning myself in them, pondering the vistas – all the experience of my past life & all its aspirations corroborating them – all my future & so far as in me lies the future of my children to be shaped modified vitalized by & through these – outwardly & inwardly. How can I be content to live wholly isolated from you? I am sure it is not possible for any one, – man or woman, it does not matter which, to receive these books, not merely with the intellect critically admiring their power & beauty, but with an understanding responsive heart, without feeling it drawn out of their breasts so that they must leave all & come to be with you sometimes without a resistless yearning for personal intercourse that will take no denial. When we come to America I shall not want you to talk to me, shall not be any way importunate. To settle down where there are some that love you & understand your poems, somewhere that you would be sure to come pretty often – to have you sit with me while I worked, you silent, or reading to yourself, I don’t mind how: to let my children grow fond of you – to take food with us; if my music pleased you, to let me play & sing to you of an evening. Do your needlework for you – talk freely of all that occupied my thoughts concerning the children’s welfare & – I could be very happy so. But silence with the living presence and silence with all the ocean in between are two different things. Therefore, these years stretch out your hand cordially, trustfully, that I may feel its warm grasp.

Good-bye, my dearest friend.

Annie Gilchrist.

LETTER X

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

50 Marquis Rd.Camden Sq. LondonJuly 14, ’72.

The 3d July was my rejoicing day, dearest Friend, – the day the packet from America reached me, scattering for a while the clouds of pain and humiliation & filling me through & through with light & warmth; indeed I believe I am often as happy reading, as you were writing, your Poems. The long new one “As a Strong Bird” of itself answers the question hinted in your preface & nobly fulfils the promise of its opening lines. We want again & again in fresh words & from the new impetus & standpoint of new days the vision that sweeps ahead, the tones that fill us with faith & joy in our present share of life & work – prophetic of the splendid issues. It does not need to be American born to believe & passionately rejoice in the belief of what is preparing in America. It is for humanity. And it comes through England. The noblest souls the most heroic hearts of England were called to be the nucleus of the race that (enriched with the blood & qualities of other races & planted down in the new half of the world reserved in all its fresh beauty & exhaustless riches to be the arena) is to fulfil, justify, outstrip the vision of the poets, the quenchless aspirations of all the ardent souls that have ever struggled forward upon this earth. For me, the most precious page in the book is that which contains the Democratic Souvenirs. I respond to that as one to whom it means the life of her Soul. It comforts me very much. You speak in the Preface of the imperious & resistless command from within out of which “Leaves of Grass” issued. This carried with it no doubt the secret of a corresponding resistless power over the reader wholly unprecedented, unapproached in literature, as I believe, & to be compared only with that of Christ. I speak out of my own experience when I say that no myth, no “miracle” embodying the notion of a direct communication between God & a human creature, goes beyond the effect, soul & body, of those Poems on me: & that were I to put into Oriental forms of speech what I experienced it would read like one of those old “miracles” or myths. Thus of many things that used to appear to me incomprehensible lies, I now perceive the germ of truth & understand that what was called the supernatural was merely an inadequate & too timid way of conceiving the natural. Had I died the following year, it would have been the simple truth to say I died of joy. The doctor called it nervous exhaustion falling with tremendous violence on the heart which “seemed to have been strained”: & was much puzzled how that could have come to pass. I left him in his puzzle – but it was none to me. How could such a dazzling radiance of light flooding the soul, suddenly, kindling it to such intense life, but put a tremendous strain on the vital organs? how could the muscles of the heart suddenly grow adequate to such new work? O the passionate tender gratitude that flooded my breast, the yearnings that seemed to strain the heart beyond endurance that I might repay with all my life & soul & body this debt – that I might give joy to him who filled me with such joy, that I might make his outward life sweeter & more beautiful who made my inner life so divinely sweet & beautiful. But, dear friend, I have certainly to see that this is not to be so, now: that for me too love & death are folded inseparably together: Death that will renew my youth.

I have had the paper from Burlington19– with the details a woman likes so to have. I wish I had known for certain whether you went on to Boston & were enjoying the music there. My youngest boy has gone to spend his holiday with his brother in South Wales & he writes me such good news of Per., that he is “looking as brown as a nut & very jolly”; his home in a “clean airy old farm house half way up a mountain in the midst of wild rough grand scenery, sea in sight near enough to hear the sound of it about as loud as the rustling of leaves” – so the boys will have a good time together, and the girls are going with me for the holiday to their grandmother at Colne. W. Rossetti does not take his till October this year. I suppose it will be long & long before this letter reaches you as you will be gone to California – may it be a time full of enjoyment – full to the brim.

Good-bye, dearest Friend,

Annie Gilchrist.

What a noble achievement is Mr. Stanley’s:20 it fills me with pleasure that Americans should thus have been the rescuer of our large-hearted, heroic traveller. We have just got his letters with account of the five races in Central Africa copied from N. Y. Herald, July 29.

LETTER XI

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

50 Marquis RoadCamden 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 RoadCamden Sq. LondonJan. 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 breasts 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 pass 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 RoadCamden 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 breasts of that fine People which has slumbered so long, weighed down & tormented with hideous nightmares of superstition. 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?