by Walt Whitman
Good-bye, dear Friend.
Annie Gilchrist.
11 Percy Carlyle Gilchrist who became an inventive metallurgist.
12 Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist, who became an artist.
LETTER VII13
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.
13 Printed from copy retained by Whitman.
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 thi
s.) 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.
14 To deliver his Dartmouth College ode.
15 William Douglas O’Connor, an ardent Washington friend of Whitman.
16 John Burroughs, the naturalist, then a young author and disciple of Whitman.
17 Anne Gilchrist’s son.
18 Horace Greeley, nominated by the Democrats as their candidate for the Presidency.
LETTER X
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
50 Marquis Rd.
Camden Sq. London
July 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.
19 Burlington, Vermont, where Whitman’s sister, Mrs. Heyde, lived.
20 Henry M. Stanley, African Explorer.
LETTER XI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
50 Marquis Road
Camden 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 ge
t 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
