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LETTER LXIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

12 Well Rd.

Hampstead

Jan. 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 Corner

Well Road, Hampstead, London, England

April 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 Corner

Hampstead

May 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 Corner

Hampstead, 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 Corner

Hampstead

Oct. 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 Corner

Hampstead

April 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

Hampstead

May 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.

Everything full of beauty just now here, as no doubt it is with you.

Good-bye, dearest friend – don’t forget the letter that is to come soon. Love from us all, love & again love from

Anne Gilchrist.

LETTER LXX
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

Keats Corner

Aug. 5, ’84.

Dearest Friend:

The notion [that] one is going to write a nice long letter is fatal to writing at all. And so I mean to scribble something, somehow, a little oftener & make up in quantity for quality! For after all the great thing, the thing one wants, is to meet– if not in the flesh – then in the spirit. A word will do it. I am getting on – my heart is in my work – & though I have been long about it, it won’t be long – but I think & hope it will be strong. Quite a sprinkling of American friends – some new ones this spring – among them Mr. & Mrs. Pennell⁴¹ from Philadelphia – whom you know – we like them well – hope to see them again & again. Also Miss Keyse (her sister married Emerson’s son) from Concord, and the Lesleys – Mary Lesley has married & gone to the West – St. Paul – has just got a little son.

How does the “little shanty” answer, I wonder? Herby has been painting some charming little bits in an old terraced garden here. I do wish you could hear Giddy sing now; I am sure her voice would “go to the right spot,” as you used to say. Good-bye, dearest friend. Love from all & most from

Anne Gilchrist.

LETTER LXXI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

Wolverhampton

Oct. 26, ’84.

Dear Walt:

I don’t suppose the enclosed will give you nearly so much pleasure as it gives me. But Villiers Stanford is, I think, the best composer England has produced since the days of Purcell & Blow, and your words will be sent home to hundreds & thousands who had not before seen them. How lovely the words read as themes for great music!

I have been staying with old friends who have a house you would enjoy – it stands all alone on the top of a heath-clad hill, with miles of coppice (young woods) below it, and spread out beyond is a rich valley with more wooded hills jutting out into it – and you see the storms a long way off travelling up from the sea, and you can wander for miles & miles through the woods or over the breezy hill – or, as you sit at your window, feel yourself in the very heart of a great, beautiful solitude. Very kind, warm friends, too, they are, who leave you as free as a bird to do what you like. I have had all the papers, dear friend, & have enjoyed them.

Now I am in the heart of the “Black Country,” as we call it – black with the smoke of thousands of foundries & works of all kinds – staying with Percy & his wife. Percy is having a very arduous time here starting some Steel Works – & what with his men being inexperienced & times bad & the machinery not yet perfectly adjusted, he seems harassed night & day – for these things have to be kept going all night too – but I hope he will get into smoother waters soon. The little son is rosy & bright & healthy – goes to school now, which, being an only child, he enjoys mightily for the sake of the companionship of other boys.

Love from us all, dear friend.

A. Gilchrist.

Grace & Herby well & busy when I left.