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LETTER XLVIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

112 Madison Ave.

March 18, 1879.

My Dearest Friend:

I hope you are enjoying this splendid, sunshiny weather as much as we are – the atmosphere here is delicious. In the morning Giddy and I set at home busy with needle work, letter writing, and reading. After lunch we go out for a walk or to pay visits – and of an evening very often to receptions (but they are not half so jolly as our evenings at Philadelphia). Still we have a lively, pleasant time. I like Miss Booth very much, with her kindly, generous character and active practical mind. So I do Mrs. Croly – she is more impulsive and enthusiastic. Kate Hillard often goes with us, & she is always good company. I had a note from Edward Carpenter the other day brought by a lady who had been living near him at Sheffield – an American lady with two very fine little girls who has lately lost her husband in England and was on her way back to her parents’ home in Pennsylvania – somewhere beyond Pittsburg. She is one who loves your poems, & has great hopes of seeing you in New York. She told me her little girls were so fond of Carpenter he of them – he is first rate with children. I hope you will not put off coming to New York till we are returning to Philadelphia, which will be some time in May. I find Beatrice is so anxious to get further advantages for study in England or Paris before she begins to practise, and Herby is so strongly advised by Mr. Eaton, of whose judgment & experience he thinks very highly, to study in Duron’s Studio in Paris for a year, that I have made up my mind to go back, for a time at any rate, this summer; but I shall leave my furniture here, and the question of where our future home is to be, open. Herby is making great progress. I wish you could see the head of an old woman he has just painted – and I wish he had had as much power when he had such splendid chances of painting you. I cannot tell you how vividly and pleasantly Chestnut St. on a sunny day rose before me in your jottings. Love from us all. Tell your sister I often think of her & shall enjoy a chat ever so.

A. G.

LETTER XLIX
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

112 Madison Ave.

March 26, ’79.

My Dearest Friend:

It seems quite a long while since I wrote, & a very long while since you wrote. I am beginning to turn my thoughts Philadelphia-wards that we may have some weeks near you before we set out on fresh wanderings across the sea; and though I feel quite cheery about them, I look eagerly forward to the time beyond that when we have a fixed, final nest of our own again, where we can welcome you just when and as you please. Whichever side the Atlantic it is, you will come surely? for you belong to the one country as much as to the other. And I shall always feel that I do too. I take back with me a deep and hearty love for America – I came indeed with a good deal of that, but what I take back is different – stronger, more real. I went over to see friends in Brooklyn yesterday, & it was more lovely than I can tell you on the Ferry – in fact, it was just your poem, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”. Herby still painting away con amore, & making good progress. I met Joaquin Miller at the Bigelows last week, & he was very pleasant (which isn’t always the case) and said some very good things to me. Thursday we are going to lunch with Mrs. Albert Brown – perhaps you may have heard of her as Bessie Griffiths. She was a Southern lady who, when she was about 18, freed all her slaves & left herself penniless. On Sunday we take tea at Prof. Rood’s of Columbia College. Kate Hillard we often see & have lively chats with. We meet also & see a good deal of General Edward Lee – a fine soldierly looking man, & I believe he distinguished himself in the war & was afterwards sent to organize the new Territory of Wyoming, & was the first governor. I wish very much that if you or your brother knew him or know anything about him, you would tell me – for reasons that I will tell you by & bye. Bee is seeing a great deal of the educated coloured people at Boston – was at the meeting of a literary club – the only white among 20 or 30 coloured ladies – likes them much.

Write soon, dear Friend. Meanwhile, best love & good-bye.

Anne Gilchrist.

No letters from England this long while.

Please give friendly greetings from me to your brother & sister.

LETTER L
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

Glasgow

Friday, June 20, 1879.

My Dearest Friend:

We set foot on dry land again Wednesday morning after a good passage – not a very smooth one – and not without four or five days of seasickness, but after that we really enjoyed the sea & the sky – it was mostly cloudy, but such lovely lights and shades & invigorating breezes! and as we got up into northern latitudes, daylight in the sky all night through. The last three days we had glorious scenery – sailed close in under the Giant’s Causeway on the north coast of Ireland – great sort of natural ramparts & bastions or rock, wonderfully grand. Then we sailed on Lough Fozle to land a group of Irish folk at Moville – some of them old people who had not seen Ireland for forty years, and who were so happy they did not know what to do with themselves. And what with this human interest, and the first getting near land again and the rich green-and-golden gorse-covered hills & the setting sun streaming along the beautiful lough with golden light, it was a sight & a time I shall never forget. Then we entered the Firth of Clyde & sailed among the islands – mountainous Arran, level Bute – & on the other hand the green hills of Ayr, with pleasant towns nestled under them, sloping to the Clyde – this was during the night – we did not go to bed at all it was so beautiful – & then came a gorgeous sunrise – & then the landing at Greenock & a short railway journey to Glasgow, the tide not serving to bring our big ship up so far. We had very pleasant (& learned withal) companions on the voyage – the Professor of Greek & of Philosophy from Harvard and a young student from Concord, all of whom we have seen since we landed and hope to see often again, especially the young student, Frank Bigelow, who is a very nice fellow. Herby enjoyed the voyage much & so did Giddy. Glasgow is a great, solidly built city, very pleasant [in] spite of smoky atmosphere – full of sturdy, rosy-cheeked people with broad Scotch accent. We have been rushing about shopping – have not yet seen Per. – shall meet him at Durham in a week’s time & spend a month together there where he will be superintending your works. Meanwhile we are going to Edinburgh for a few days. I kept thinking of you on the voyage, dear friend, & wondering how you would like it – & whether you could stand being stowed away in the little box-like berth at night. I should recommend any American friend coming over to try this line – we had a fine ship – fine officers & crew – & the latter part, fine scenery. Love to your Brother & Sister & to Mr. Burroughs. Address to me for the present.

Care Percy C. Gilchrist

Blaenavon

Poutzpool

Mon.

Love from us all. I shall write soon again. Good-bye dear Friend.

A. Gilchrist.

LETTER LI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

Lower Shincliffe

Durham

August 2d, ’79.

Dearest Friend:

I am sitting in my room with my dear little grandson, the sweetest little fellow you ever saw, asleep beside me. Giddy and Norah (my 3d daughter) are gone into Durham to do some shopping. Bee is up in London on her way to Berne in Switzerland, where she has finally decided to complete her medical studies. Herby is, I think, staying with Eustace Conway at Hammersmith just now. He has been spending a week at Brighton with Edward Carpenter & his family – but I will leave him to tell his own news. We are lodging in this little village with its red-tiled roofs & gray stone walls, lying among wooded hills, corn fields, meadows, and collieries on the banks of the Weir, for the sake of being near Percy & his wife. He is superintending here the erection of some kilns for making the peculiar kind of basic firebricks needed in his dephosphorization process. Durham Cathedral, which was mainly built soon after the Norman conquest, is in sight, crowning a wooded hill that rises abruptly from the river-side. It looks as solid, majestic, venerable as the rocks & hills – the interior is of wonderful grandeur & beauty. When you enter one of these cathedrals you are tempted to say architecture is a lost art with us moderns so far as sublimity is concerned – except in vast engineering works. You would not dignify the Weir with the name of a river in America – it is no bigger than Timber Creek – but it winds about so capriciously through the picturesque little city as to make almost an island of the hill on which the castle & cathedral stand & to need three great solid stone bridges within a quarter of a mile of each other, & with its steep wooded sides carrying nature right into the heart of the old town. But the rainy season (we have scarcely seen the sun since we have been in England & I believe it is the same in France & Italy) and the great depression in trade, especially the coal & iron, which chiefly concerns this district, seem to cast a gloom over everything. There are whole rows of colliers’ cottages in this village empty. Where they go to no one knows, but as soon as the collieries reopen they will all reappear. We often meet Colliers returning from work – they look as if they had just emerged from Hades, poor fellows – their faces black as soot – their lean, bowed legs bare – I believe the mines are hot here; they work with little on – but they are really the cleanest of all workmen, as they take a bath every night on their return before supping. The speech here is almost like a foreign tongue to any one from the south or middle of England. I wonder if you have yet read Dr. Bucke’s book.²⁹ It is about the only thing I have read since my return. It suggests deeply interesting trains of thought.

I wonder if you are at Camden, taking your daily trips across the ferry & strolls up Chestnut St. I hardly realized till I left it how dearly I love America – great sunny land of hope and progress – or how my whole life has been enriched with the human intercourse I had there. Give my love to those of our friends whom you know & tell them not to forget us. I have had a long letter from Emma Lazarus. I suppose Hattie and Jessie are spending their holidays at Camden & that Hattie has pretty well done with school. We have been chiefly busy with needlework since we came – preparing dear Bee for Berne. I miss her sadly – had quite hoped we should have all been together at Paris this winter – but it seems the course is much longer & more arduous [there]. We spent a week in Edinburgh before we came on here. It is by far the most beautiful city I have ever seen. The journey between it and Berwick-on-Tweed lies through the richest & best cultivated farm land in Britain – the sea sparkling on one side of us & these fertile fields dotted with splendid flocks & herds – with large comfortable-looking farmhouses, & here & there an old castle; it was singularly enjoyable. How I have wished everywhere that you were with us to share the sight – and the best is that you would return home more than ever proud & rejoicing in America. It is a land where humanity is having, and is going to have, such chances as never before. Giddy sends her love. Mine also & to your brother & sister. Good-bye, dear Friend.

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 Vernon

Hampstead

Jan. 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, Haslemere

England

Aug. 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.