HARNED / WHITMAN CORRESPONDENCE Gilchrist, Anne Sept. 1871 - July 1885 (L. C. 132 - 135) Box 3 Folder 33 ____ ____ THE GILCHRIST CORRESPONDENCE 132 Rough draft of a letter from Whitman to Anne Gilchrist (London, England) (Camden, N. J.) Feb. 8 (18).72. (2) p. on I l 15 1/2 x 20 cm. Holograph, written and revised in ink on lined paper. Anne Gilchrist Feb.8, '72 I send [you], by same mail with this, [a long] my latest piece, copied in a newspaper. and write you just 'line''. [I should have long] [so] I suppose you [have] only [have] received my former [former] letters (two) - I ought to have [g] [m] written something about your children (described to me in your letter of last summer (July 23) which I have just been reading [*1404*] again). Dear boys and girls - how my heart goes out to them. - [and] [how earnestly I wish them prosperity] [well I feel that they must be] [noble children] [There is nothing] Did I tell you that I had received letters from Tennyson, and that [h] he cordially invites me to visit him? Sometimes I dream of coming to Old England. on such visit - & [then] thus of seeing you & your children - But it is [only] a dream only. 23 [*1405] [23][*'72*] I am still living here, [in] [Washi] [a] in [my] employment in a government office - my health is good. Life is rather sluggish here - yet not without [its] the sunshine. Your letters [have] [are] [des] too were [like] [such] warm bright rays of it. I am [soon] going on to New York soon, [for] to stay a few weeks, but my address will still be here. I wrote lately to Mr. Rossetti quite a long letter. I [send] best [love and remem] [And now with loving to close, re] Dear friend best love & remembrance to you, & to the young folk Mrs. Gilchrist Feb. 8, '72133 Rough draft of a letter from Whitman to [Anne Gilchrist] [London, England] [Camden, N. J.] Aug.16 [18]73. Fifteen holograph fragments, in pencil and ink with revisions in ink, ranging in size from 1 1/2 to 6 1/2 to I0 x 19 1/2 cm. [*1406*] [*67a] I have had paralysis, [partial] and am still benumbed, & suffering from distress in the head [*1407*] Since I last wrote, [billowy] clouds have darkened over me, and [now] still remain. On the [morning] night of [24th] 23d January last I was [awoke] paralyzed, left side. [partial] and [p] have remained [as so now] so [&] since. [M] March] Feb. 19 I lost a Dear dear sister, [Martha E. Whitman] who died in St. Louis, leaves two young daughters, May 23rd. My dear inexpressibly beloved mother died in Camden N.J. I was just able to get from Washington to [her side][that the] of [*1408*] her dying bed [fed] & sit there. I am still feeble, palsied, & have [?] great distress in the head. But there are [favorable] points [not] more [un]favorable in night's rest, [fair appetite & digestion. &c] [It] I think the probabilities are [of] for my recovery yet. [If I could] get [*1409*] When my dear mother died (May 23) - - I was just able to get from Washington to her bed-side and sit there. * I thought I was bearing it all strongly, but I find [it affects] it affecting the progress of my recovery since and now. [*1410*] I [must] [will] write you a line dear loving friend [?] [you] a [long] [long while I just have written] [?] may. [?] time I have been going to write. but I [?] up and dressed every day, sleep & eat middly well & do not [look] [appear] change much yet in flesh & face, [but] only look very old. [different from before. I think I should probably still get well but may not] [*1411*]Department of Justice Washington 187 Department of Justice Washington 187. [*4-1 150 lie*] Washington (inverted) [I have] the pain or distress in my head [for what] averages more than half. (inverted) [*went-- Aug [19] '20 73*] [*to A. G Aug 16 '73*] [*Arv Gilebush 9/33*] the pictures in the one of Jan. [24. '72] Though I can [slowly] move slowly very short distances I walk even then with difficulty & have to stay in the house My case is one even then of cerebral nearly anemia - the paralysis arises out of that. As I write today, I feel that I shall probably get well - though I may not. [*1412*] [*1413*] * (your letters of Jan. 24, June 3 & July 14 of last year and of Jan 31, and May 20, this year, (with certainly one other [perhaps] maybe two) all came safe [*1414*] I must [w?] friend once [mo?] Many times during the past year have I thought of you & your children. Many times indeed [I] have I been going to write, but did not. [Many timed indeed have I thought of you & your children.] I have just been reading over again several of these [lat] & last year's letters from you, & looking at the [*1415*] pictures sent in the one of Jan. 24 '72. * Do not think hard of me for not writing [much] in reply. If you could look into my spirit & emotions you would be [*1416*] entirely satisfied & at [rest] peace.[*1417*] [The enclosed ring I have just taken from my finger & to send you, with my love. I shall probably get well - but though I may not.] My post office address [will] continues at Washington. [I will write again] [L] I send my love [*1418] to Percy & all your dear children. I am at present temporarily here at Camden, [N] on the Delaware river, opposite Philadelphia, at the home of my brother, and I am occupying [the] as I write, the rooms where my mother died. [+] you must not be unhappy about me, as I am as comfortably situated as can be - & many things - indeed, every thing - in my case might be so much worse. Though my plans are not definite, [I] [have] my intention as far as anything is, on getting stronger and after the hot season passes, [is] to get back to Washington, [*1419] for the fall & winter. The enclosed ring I have just taken from my finger, & send to you, with my love. [*1420*]134 Rough draft of a letter from Whitman to Anne Gilchrist (London, England) (Camden, N. J.) Mar. 17, 1876) Seven holograph fragments, written and revised in ink, ranging in size from 3 x 20 to 14 1/2 x 14 1/2 cm. Accompanied by newspaper clipping with note in Whitman's hand: "March 17 '76/ letter to Mrs. Gilchrist." Don't do any thing towards it, nor resolve on it, nor make any move at all on it, without further advice from me, If I should get well enough to voyage, we will talk about it yet in London [*1421*] Dearest friend, To your[s] good & comforting letter of Feb. 25th [has reach'd] me. [*1422*] I [will only write a] at once [will] answer [though only] at least with [these] a few lines [About my health [p] My health, I am encouraged to think [& feel that] is perhaps a shade better - certainly as well as any time of late. [*1423*] I [wrote] have already written this morning [answering] (to answer one just rec'd from him) a pretty full letter [this morning] to Mr. Rossetti, [which I have] & requested him to loan it you for perusal. in that [*1424] I have [said] described my [the] situation [still] fully & [very] candidly. I even [feel] already vaguely contemplate plans, (they may never be but yet they may fulfilled,) of changes, journeys - even of coming to London, & of seeing you, visiting my friends, &c. My Dearest friend, I do not approve your American trans-settlement - I see so many things here you have no idea of - the social, and almost every other kind of crudeness, [*1425] meagreness, [here] (at least in appearance) WM. TORBERT, President F. A. ELLIS, Secretary and Treasurer MANAGERS: Wm. Torbert Richard I. Thomas Jos. H. Steele Daniel Bratton G. R. Howard Barclay Reynolds Jacob Tome Wm. M. Knight I. F. Vanarsdale OFFICE OF THE Mutual Fire Insurance Company of Cecil County Elkton, March 14th 1876 Walt Whitman Esq. Esteemed Sir. [?] to add yours to my collection, and would you be kind enough to send me the address of Alfrad Tenneyson, I have endeavored to obtain it several times but could never succeed, by complying with my request you will greatly oblige - Yours respectfully Harry A Hirn. Elton, Maryland.My new edition is printed & ready Upon receipt of your letter I [have] sent you a set, two Vols. (by mail March 15) which you must have rec'd by this time I [want] wish you to send [me] word as soon as they arrive. [*1426] [I Dearest friend] you must not be uneasy about me - Dearest friend, I get along much better than you think for I [am not in want &] [As to poverty] As to the literary situation here, [?] my rejection by this coteries [wouldn't be rich] [as am ?] poverty (which is the least of my troubles) am not sure but I [prefer] enjoy them all - [A, them all] besides, as to the latter, I am not in want. [*1427]Geneva Illinois March 13. 1876 Mr Walt Whitman Dear Sir I am compiling for my own use a list of the principal American authors together with the dates of the publication of their most noted works, and from the limited resources which I have at hand, (my library having been destroyed by fire) I have been unable to learn the year in which your volume entitled "After all not to create only" was first printed. If you will do me the kindness to inform me of the date I desire I will remain[*March 17 '76 Letter to Mrs. Gilchrist*] Free Dress & Times. EVENING EDITION. BURLINGTON. MONDAY, MARCH 13, 1876. There was a sharp political discussion in the Senate, on Friday, provoked by a speech of Senator Gordon, of Georgia, who charged that the government had been cheated out of one thousand millions of dollars by whiskey frauds. Senator Morton responded, showing that he loss was largest while Andrew Johnson was President and Democrats held office under him, and defending the Republican while be criticised the Democratic party. Senator Withers, of Virginia, Senator Sherman, of Ohio, and Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, took part in the discussion, and the Republican members made it so lively for their opponents that they will be cautious about leading off in another political debate. [?ork] World said at first that [?] deals with the Belknap affair [?er] of partisan gain or loss will be [?sly] consigned to a grave of political [?nation], from which no resurrection will be possible." On one day last week, it had seven editorial articles attempting to fix the responsibility for Belknap and his crime upon the Republican party. 1428 Mr. Clymer is now engaged in the pleasing business of investigating himself. Generally when a member of Congress is in difficulty, he turns his case over to some other member to take the testimony; but Mr. Clymer takes his own affair in charge, and all that can be learned on the outside indicates that he will get up a good case against himself in a very few days. he called Mr. Nordhoff, the herald correspondent, who said that Clymer had neglected to cause an inquiry into the payment [?] [?] the [?] Mr. Pinchback is said to attribute his defeat to the "old abolition state of Vermont." It is not often that a colored man uses the word "abolition" as a term of reproach: but as to the substance of his statement Mr. P. is not far from right. In the debate, Senator Morrill, of Vermont, said, in explanation of his vote, that the fact that there was a doubt about the legality of Pinchback's election was implied by the non-action of the Senate. if the question had been free from doubt the applicant would have been admitted three years ago. it had been argued here that the members of the committee which made the investigation into Louisiana affairs had changed their opinions. Suppose they had, that did not change a fact in the case. But for the ability of the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Morton) the case would now have no place before the Senate. The Constitution of the United states made the Senate the exclusive judges of the election of its won members, and, for one, he was not ready to accept the doings of the so-called Louisiana legislature as the natural and legitimate outgrowth of Republican institutions. The colored people were entitled to representatives in the Senate, and he hoped they would have such representatives in point of ability and eloquence as would make Senators proud to call them peers. he (Mr. Morrill) had no prejudice on account of color other than in its favor. This whole thing in Louisiana looked to him like a stupendous fraud, and so far as he was concerned he would vote against receiving any Senator elected by that Legislature, be he Republican or be he Democrat. The Philadelphia Press says of the case: The Pinchback case has at last been decided, after pending in the Senate more than three years. The renunciation of the Republican Senators who accomplished this end is, under all the circumstances, highly laudable and extraordinary. it is a height of virtue to which the Democrats are not likely to attain. Pinchback would have been a sure vote for the Republican party should he have been admitted to a seat in the Senate. To refuse him his chair is to throw the election of a man to fill the vacancy into the hands of the Democrats. it is doubtful whether a Gubernatorial appointment (would meet with any success in the Senate. If it did not, next winter the Legislature [?] in its aspirations has her own that can lead her for ever & for ever up and on. It is for her soul exactly as it is for her body the strong divine soul of the man embracing hers with passionate love. If alone [it is that] the precious germs within her soul can be quickened into life. And to him will come when [when] man will understand that a womans soul is as dear and needful to his & as different from his as her body to his body. This was what happened to me when I had read for a few days nay hours in your book. It was [as if] the divine souls embraces mine. I never before read what love meant: nor what life meant. Never was alive before - No words but those "new birth" can hint the meaning of what this happened to me. [*Sept. 3 '71] September 3 Dear friend At last the beloved books have reached my hand yet now I paw them My heart is so rent with anguish eyes so blinded I cannot read in them. I try again and again but the great waves come anyway up & suffocate me - I will struggle to tell you my story. It seems to me it is a death struggle. When I was eighteen I met a lad of nineteen who loved me then, and always for the remainder of his life. After we had known each other about a year he asked me to be his wife. But I said that I liked him well as my friend but could not love him as a wife should love & felt deeply convinced I never should. He was not turned aside but went on just the same as if that conversation had never passed. After a year he asked me again, I deeply moved by & grateful [*1429] for his true and steady love. and so sorry for him, I said yes. But next day, terrified at what I had after a painfully consideration of the near absence from my heart of any faintest gleam of true tender wifely love. I said no again. This too he bore without desisting & at the end of some months once more asked me with passionate entreaties. Then dear friend, I prayed earnestly and it seems to me that I should continue to mar & thwart his life so was not right if he was content to accept what I could give. I knew I could lead a good and wholesome life beside him. his arms were noble. his [his] heart a deep beautiful true poets heart but he had not the poets great brain. His past has a very arduous one and I knew I could smooth it for him, cheer him along. It seem to me Gods will that I should marry him. So I told him the whole truth and he said he would either have me on those terms than not have me at all. He said to me many times - oh Annie it is not you who are so loved that is rich it is I who is love. And I knew this was true. felt as if my patience was over & barren beside his - But it was not so .. it was my slumbering - undeveloped. For dear friend, my Soul was as passionately - aspiring - it so thirsted & pined for light it had not power to each alone & he could not help me on my way. And a woman is so made that she cannot give the [th] tender passionate devotion of her whole nature save to the greater conjuring soul stronger in its power though not 1430but nothing in life or death can tear out of my heart the passionate belief that one day I shall hear that voice say to me "My mate, the one I so much want. Bride wife indissoluble eternal"! It is not happiness I plead with God for - it is the very life of my Soul, my love is its life. Dear Walt - It is a sweet & precious thing this love. it clings so close, [to] so close to the Soul and Body all so tenderly dear so beautiful so sacred. it yearns with such passion[ate] to soothe and comfort & fill thee with sweet tender joy. it aspires as grandly as gloriously as they own soul. The first few months of my marriage were dark & gloomy to me within and sometimes I had misgivings whether I had judged aright, but when I knew there was a new baby coming my heart grew lighter. and when it was born. such a superb child - all glooms & fear forever vanished. I knew it was God's seal to the marriage and my heart was full of gratitude and joy. It was a happy and a good life we led together for ten short years. he ever tender and affectionate to me - loving his children so. working earnestly. in the wholesome bracing atmosphere of poverty - for it was but not possible with the most strenuous frugality & industry to pay our way. I learned to cook & to turn my hand [*1431*]hand to all household occupation found it bracing healthy and cheerful - [nothing ?] Now I think it more even now that I understand the divineness & sacredness of the Body. I think there is no more beautiful task for a woman than ministering all ways to the health & comfort & enjoyment of the dear bodies of those she loves: no material that will work is sweeter or more beautifully into that making of a perfect poem of a mans life which is his true vocation. In 1861my children's took scarlet fever badly, I thought I should have lost my dear oldest girl. [(abt] then my husband took it - and in five days it carried him from me. I think, Dear friend, my sorrow was far more bitter though not so deep as that of a loving tender wife. As I stood by him in his coffin I felt with remorse I had not, could not be more tender to him. such a conviction that if I had loved him as he deserved to be loved he would not have been taken from us. To the last my soul dwelt apart & unmated & his soul dwelt apart unmated. I do not fear the look of his dear silent eyes. I do not think he would even be grieved with me now. My youngest was then a baby. I have had much sweet tranquil happiness, much strenuous work and endeavour raising my darlings. In May 1869 came the voice over the Atlantic to me. O the voice of my Mate it must be so. my love raises up out of the very depths of the grief & tramples upon despair. I can wait, [I can] any time a [life] life time, many life times I can suffer I can dare. I can learn. grow. toil [*1432]enabled me to carry into execution what I was brooding over. For I had and still have a strong conviction that it was necessary for a woman to speak. that finally and decisively only a woman can judge a man only a man a woman on the subject of his relations. What is blameless, what is good in its effect on her 'is' good, however it may have seemed to men. She is the test. And I never for a moment fear any hard words of angst myself because I know these ways are not judged by the intellect but by the unerring instincts of the soul. I knew any man could not but feel that it would be a happy an ennobling thing for him that his wife should think & feel as I do on that subject. Knew that what had filled me with such great & beautiful thoughts toward men in the writing could not fail to give them good & happy thoughts towards women in the reading. The cause of my consenting to Rossetti's urgent wish that I should not put my name, he so kindly solicitous yet not altogether understanding me & it aright I was that I did not rightly understand how it might be with my dear Roz if this came before him. I thought perhaps he was not old enough to judge and understand me enough: nor young enough to let it altogether a love. But it has been very bitter & hateful to me this not standing to what I have said and were with my own personality - better because of my utter love and faithfulness to the cause & [*1434]& longing to stand openly & proudly in the ranks of its friends "& for the lower reason that say nature is [?] proud & as defiant as their own and immeasurably disdains my faintest appearance of being afraid [?] of what I had done - And my darling above all because I love thee so tenderly that [h] if hateful words had been spoken against me I could have taken joy in it for thy dear sake. Then never yet was the woman who loved that would not joyfully bare her breast to wrest the wounds blows aimed at her beloved. [coffin I felt such remorse that I had not been more tender to him such a connection that if I had loved him as he diminished the loved he would not have been taken from us. I [?] the last my soul dwelt apart unmated & his soul dwelt apart unmated. My youngest was then baby. I have had much] [so] strong to soar, soft & tender to nestle and caress. [Understand dear love the [?] reason of my silence] If God were to say to me - see - "he that you love you shall not be given to [see?] in this life - he is going to set sail on the unknown sea - will you go with him" - never yet has bride sprung into her husbands arms with the joy [& triumph] I would take his hand & spring from the shore. Understand aright dear love the reason of my silence. I was obeying the voice of conscience I thought I was to wait, for it is the instinct of a womans nature to wait to be sought not to seek. And when that May & June I was longing so irresponsibly to write I resolutely restrained myself believing if I we're only patient for the right opening[s] would occur. And so it did through Rossetti. And when he liking what I said suggested 5' my printing something it met and [*1433]which my soul sings Arise Shine for thy light is come & the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." After the 29th of this month I shall be in my own home dear friend. it is at Brooklands Haslemere Surrey - Haslemere is on the main line between Portsmouth and London Good by dear [friend] Walt. Annie Gilchrist. Sept. 6 The new portrait also is a small joy & comfort to my longing pining heart & eyes. How have I brooded and brooded with thankfulness on that one word in thy letter "the comfort it has been to me & yet his word" for always day and night these two years has hovered on my life & in my heart. The one prayer: dear God let me comfort him! Let me comfort thee with my whole being dear love. I feel much better and stronger now. I know not what fiend made me write those meaningless words in my letter "it is pleasantest to me" &c. but it was not fear or faithlessness & it is not pleasantest & not hateful to me Now let me come to beautiful joyous things again. [?] dear Walt, did you not feel in every word the breath of a woman's love? Did you not not see as through a transparent veil a soul all radiant and [glow] trembling with love, stretching out its arms towards you? I was so sure you would speak, would send me some sign: that I was to wait - wait. So I fed my heart with sweet hopes, strengthened it with looking with the eyes of thy picture. O surely in the ineffable tenderness of the book speaks the yearnings of thy man-soul toward my woman-soul? But now [*1435]I will wait no longer. A higher instinct dominates that other. the instinct for perfect truth. I would if I could lay every thought and action and feeling of my whole life open to thee as it lies to the eye of God. But that cannot be all at once. O come. come my darling: look into these eyes and see the loving ardent aspiring soul in them. easily easily will you learn to love all the rest of me for the sakes of that and take me to your breast for ever and ever. Out of its great anguish my love has risen stronger more triumphant than ever: it cannot doubt cannot fear is strong driving immortal. says of its fruition this side the grave as the other. "O agonistic throes." leads passionate yearnings. passing triumphant joys sweet dreams I too know you all. But dear love the sinews of a woman outer heart are not twisted so strong as man's: but the heart within is strong & great & loving. So the strain is very terrible. O heart of flesh, hold on yet a few years to the great heart within thee if it may be. But if not all is assured. all is safe. This time year when I seemed dying I [to] could have no secrets between me & my dear children. I told them of my love: told them all they could rightly understand. and laid upon them my earnest injunction that as soon as my mothers life no longer held them here, they should go fearlessly to America, as I should have planted them down there - Land of promise. my Canaan to [*1436]to thee. I feel for a certainty that she may. Try me for this life my darling - see if I cannot so live, to grow, to learn, to love that when I die you will say - "this woman has grown to "be a very part of me. My soul "must have her loving companionship "everywhere & in all things "I alone & she alone are not "complete identities - it is I "and her together in to new divine "perfect union that form to one complete identity - [?] I am yet young enough to bear thee children my darling if god should so bless me. And [of] would yield my life for this came with serene joy if it were so appointed if that were the price for my having a "perfect child" - knowing my darling would all be safe & happy in thy loving care - planted down in America - Brookbank, Shottermill Haslemere. Surrey Oct. 23. 1871. Dear Friend. I wrote you a letter on 6th September & would fain know whether it has reached your hand. If it have not, I will write it's contents again quickly to you - if it has, I will wait your time with courage with patience for an answer; but spare me the needless suffering of uncertainty on this point & let me have one line, one word of assurance that I am no longer hidden from sun by a thick cloud - I that have never set eyes upon thee, all the Atlantic flowing between us yet [that] cleave closer than those that stand nearest & dearest around this - [that] love thee day and night: - last thoughts first - thoughts my soul's has in which its yearning toward thy divine Soul, every hour, every [*1437]deed and thought - my love for my children, my hopes aspirations for them all taking new shape new height through this great love My soul has staked all upon it. In dull dark moods when [my soul] I cannot as if never met thee still. still always a dumb flair yearning towards thee - still it comforts me to touch, to press to me the beloved book. like a child holding some hand in the dark. it knows not who - but know it is enough- knows it is a dear strong comforting hand. Do not say I am forward. or that I lack pride because I tell this love to thee who had never sought or made sign of desiring to seek me. Or for all that this love 'is' my pride my glory. Sources of suffering and 'joys' that cannot [tell?] put themselves into words - Besides it is not true thou hast not sought or loved me. For [when] when I read [in] the Divine poems I feel all folded round in thy love: I feel often as if thou wast pleading [&c] so passionately for thy love of a woman that can understand thee - that I know not how to bear the yearning answering tenderness that fills my breast. I know that a woman may without hurt to her pride. without shame or blame tell her love [*1438]Let me have a few words directly dear Friend. I shall get them by the middle of November. I shall have to go to London about two or a little later - to find a house for us. I only came to this old home now from which I have been absent most four years to wind up matters & prepare for a move. for there is nothing to be had in the way of educational advantages here. it has been a a beautiful survey for the children, but it is not what [*1439]they want now. But we leave with regret for it is one of sweetest wildest spots in England though only 40 miles from London. Good bye dear friend Ann Gilchrist loosing so. all alone as I have done now nearly three years - it will be three in May since I first rec'd the book. first knew what the word love meant. Love & Hope are so strong in me, My souls high aspirations are of such tenacious passionate intensity, are so conscious of their own deathless reality that what would starve them out of any other woman only makes them strike out deeper roots grow more resolute & sturdy in me. I know that "greatness will not ripen for me like a pear" But I could face, I could joyfully accept the fiercest anguish, the hardest toil the longest sternest probation to make me fit to [*27 Nov 71] Dear Friend Your long waited for letter brought me both joy & pain; but the pain was not of your giving. I gather from it that a long letter which I wrote you Sept. 6th after I had received the precious packet, a letter in which I opened all my heart to you, never reached your hands: nor yet a shorter one which, tortured by anxiety & suspense about its predecessor I wrote Oct. 15. it too, written out of such stress & intensity of painful emotion as wrenches from us inmost truth. I cannot face the thought of these words of uttermost trust & love having fallen into others hands. Can both be simply lost? Could any man suffer a base curiosity to make him so meanly treacherously cruel? It seems to cut and then burn me - [*1440]I was not disappointed at the short ness of your letter & I do not ask nor even wish you to write save when you are inwardly impelled & desirous of doing so. I only want leave and security to write freely to you. Your book does indeed say all - book that is not a book but, for the first time a man complete godlike august standing revealed the only way possible through the garment of speech. Do you know dear Friend what it means for a woman, what it means for me to understand these poems. It means for her whole nature to be then first kindled: quickened into life through such love, such sym pathy, such resistless attraction that henceforth she cannot choose but live & die striving to become worthy to share this Divine mans life - to be his dear companion closer nearer. dearer than any man can be- for ever so. Her soul stakes all on this. It is the meaning the fulfilment the only perfect developement & consummation of her nature. of her passionate high immortal aspirations - her Soul to mate with his for ever & ever. O I know the terms are obdurate. I know how hard to attain to this greatness, the grandest lot ever aspired to by woman. I know too my own shortcomings, faults-flaws You might not be able to give me your great love yet. - to take me to your breast with joy. But I can wait : I can grow great & beautiful through sorrow & suffering, [*13] working struggling yearning [*1441]Then when the Book came but with it no word for me alone. There was such a storm in heart I could not for weeks read [in] it. I wrote that long letter but in the Autumn fields for dear life's sake. I knew I might and must speak then. Then I felt relieved joyful buoyant once more - I have again months of heart wearing disappointment as I looked in vain for a letter. O the anguish at times the scalding tears. the feeling within as if my heart were crushed I doubled up. Yet always afterwards saying to myself "if this suffering is to make my love which was born & grew up & blossomed all in a moment strike deep root down in the dark & cold, penetrate with painful intensity - every fibre of my being, make it a love such as he himself is capable of giving, then welcome this anguish these bitter deferments: let it's roots be watered as long as God pleases with my tears. Annie Gilchrist. 50 Marquis Road Camden Sqr. N.W. London be your mate - so that at the least you should say "this is the woman I have waited for, the woman prepared for me: this is my dear eternal comrade. wife - the one I so much want." Life has no other meaning for me than that - all things have led up to help prepare me for that. Death is more welcome to me than life if it means that - if then dear Sailor, the sailing upon thy endless cruise thou takest me on board - me darling all with thee. steering for the deep waters, bound where mariners has not yet dared to go: hand in hand with thee, nestled close - one with thee. Oh that word enough was like a blow on the breast to me - breast [*1442]that often & often is so full of yearning tenderness I know not how to draw my breath. The tie between us would not grow less but more beautiful fear friend if you know me better: if I could stand as real & near to you as you do to me. But I cannot like you clothe my nature in Divine poems & so make it visible to you. Of foolish me! I thought you would catch a glimpse of it in those words I wrote. I thought you would say to yourself "perhaps this is the voice of my mate" & would seek me a little to make sure if it were so or not. O thy sweet oceans I have fed on these three years nearly pervading every waking moment influencing every thought & action. I was so sure, so sure if I wailed silently patiently you would send me some sign: so full of joyful love I could not doubt nor fear. When I lay dying as it seems, still full of the radiant certainty that you would seek me would not lose, that we should as surely find one another there as here. And when the ebb ceased & life began to flow back into me I never doubting but it was for you. never doubting but that the sweetest noblest, closest tenderest compassionately ever get tasted by man & woman was to begin for us here & now. Then came the long long waiting. the hope deferred: each morning so sure the book would come & with it a word from you that should give me leave to speak: no longer to shut down in stern silence thy love. the yearning thy thoughts that seem to strain & crush my heart. I know what that means - if thou was not gifted to sing thou wouldst surely die". I felt as if my silence must kill me sometimes [*1443]great & beautiful thoughts sorrow suffering, working, struggling yearning, loving so all alone - as I have done now [the] nearly (it will be 3 in May since I first read the book, first hand) three years - Love & Hope are so strong in me. My souls high aspirations are of such tenacious passionate intensity, are so conscious of their own deathless reality that what would starve them out of any other woman only makes them strike out deeper roots, grow more resolute & sturdy in me. I know that "greatness will not open for me like a pear" - But I could face, I could joyfully accept the fiercest, anguish the hardest toil, the longest sternest probation to make me [Dec. 71] Dear Friend, Your long awaited for letter brought me both joy & pain: but the pain was not of your giving. I gather from it that a long letter which I wrote you Sept. 6th after I had received the precious packet, a letter in which I opened all my heart to you never reached your hands: nor get a shortened one which, tortured by anxiety & suspense about its predecessor I wrote about the 15 October - it too written out of such a stress and intensity of painful emotion as wrench from us inmost truth. I cannot face the thought of these [having] these words of uttermost love and trust having fallen into other hands than yours - can both be simply lost! could any man be so basely treacherously cruel as to intercept them? It seems to cut & and then burn me. [*1444]I was not disappointed at the shortness of your letter & I do not ask nor even wish you to write save when you are mainly impelled & desirous of doing so. I only want leave & security to write freely to you. Your book does indeed say all - book that is not [a] your book but, for the first time, a Mans complete, godlike, [nature] august standing revealed the only way possible through the garment of speech. Do you know dear friend what it means for a woman, what it means for me to understand these poems! It means for her whole nature to be [?] the first kindled, quickened into life through such love, such sympathy, such resistless attraction that thensforth she cannot choose but [living] live. & die striving to become worth to share this divine mans life. to be his dear companion closer nearer dearer than any man can be - for ever so. Her soul stakes all on this: it is the meaning the fulfillment the only perfect development and consummation of her nature, of her passionate high in mortal aspirations - her soul to mate with his for ever & ever. O. I know the terms are obdurate. I know how hard to attain to this greatness this [?] grandest lot ever aspire to by woman. I know, too, my own shortcomings & faults flaws. You might not be able to give me your great love yet. - to take me to your breast with joy. But I can wait: I can grow [*1445]my silence must kill me sometimes. Then when the Book came, but with it no word for me alone There was such a storm in my heart I could not for weeks read in it. I wrote that long letter out in the autumn fields for dear lifes sake: I knew I must speak. Then I felt relieved, joyful buoyant once more. Then again months of heart wearing disappointment as I looked in vain for a letter - O the anguish at times - the scalding tears the feeling within as if my heart crushed & doubled up. Yet always afterwards saying to myself if this suffering is to make my love which was born & grew up & blossomed all in a moment, strike deep root down in the dark & cold. penetrate with painful intensity every fibre of my being, make it a love such as he himself is capable of giving then welcome this anguish, this bitter deferments: let its roots be watered as long as God pleases with my tears. Annie Gilchrist 50 Marquis Road, Camden Sqr. N.W London fit to be your mate - so that at the last you should say - this is the woman I have waited for. this is my dear eternal [dear?] [companion] comrade, wife - the one I so much want. Life has no other meaning for me than that - all things have led up help prepare me for that. Death is more welcome to me than life if it means that - if then dear Sailor - then sailing upon thy endless cruise then takest me on board - me daring all with thee - steering for the deep waters - bound where mariner has not yet dared to go - hand in hand with thee - nestled close, I, one with thee. Ah that word [*1446]enough was like a blow on the breast to me - breast that often & often is so full of yearning tenderness I know not how to draw my breath. The tie between us would not grow less but more beautiful dear friend if you knew me better: if I could stand as real & near to you as you do to me. But I cannot, like you clothe my nature in divine poems & so make it visible to you. Oh foolish me! I thought you would catch a glimpse of it in those words I wrote. I thought you would say to yourself "perhaps this is the voice of my mate" & would seek me a little to make sure if it were so or not. O the sweet dreams I have [fed on?] these three years nearly pervading every waking moment blending with influencing every thought & action I was so sure. so sure if I waited silently & patiently, you would send me some sign - so full of joyful love I could not doubt or fear - when I lay dying as it seemed still full of [?] radiant certainty that you would seek me. would not love me. that we should as surly find one another then as here. And when the ebb ceased & life began to flow back into me O never doubting but it was for you: never doubting but that the sweetest [?] noblest tenderest closest companionship ever yet tasted by man & woman. was to begin for us here & now. Then came the long long waiting. the hope deferred. each morning so hopeful the book would come & with it a word from you that should give me leave to speak no longer to shout down in stern silence thy love. the yearning thy thoughts that seemed to strain & crush my heart. I know what that means "if thou wast not gifted to sing thou wouldst surely die". I felt as if [*1447]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 & at a 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 rest depend upon my mother whose only surviving child I am. And she by nature generous & self denying as well so 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 50 Marquis Road. Camden Sqre. London. N.W. Jan 24/72 Dear Friend, I send you photographs of my eldest 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 Daguerreotype. 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 them 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 [*1448]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 & welcome to you. - but restless, anxious impatient, looking so wistfully toward the letter 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 [of] height of [this] great destiny: of justifying & fulfilling your grand thoughts of women. And see my faults flaws shortcomings too dear Friend. I feel a an earnest wish you should do this too that there may be the broad immovable foundation - rock of perfect truth & candour for our love. O. 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. verified. strengthened by your presence. surrounding you with an atmosphere of love & cheerful life. When I wrote to you in Nov. I was lodging in London having just accomplished the difficult task of finding a [*1449]to do this & have put the management of the whole into my hands. And I, feeling that she needs and ought to have now, an easier scale of expenditures at Colue, have to manage a little more cleanly still to make a less sum serve for us. But I succeeded completely dear friend - do not want a better home, never get behind hand. & find [f] 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 Per obtained in November a good opening in some large copper & iron mining & smelting works in South Wales at a salary upon which we can comfortably live [*1450]& he likes his work well - writes us cheerfully - lodges in a farm house in the midst of grand scenery, within a walk of the sea. [An] So this enables me to give the girls a turn in education for withinto they have had barely ant teaching but mine. And I chose this part because there is a capital day school for them handily. And Herby to others in: to the best drawing school in London. & is very diligent & 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 of the Nov. one? O good bye dear Friend Annie Gilchristover the wooded weald do Sussex so richly green & fertile & [?] looking almost as boundless as the great sweep of sky over it - the South Downs - the Surry Hills & near at hand the hill curving round [in] a fir - covered promontory, standing out very black & grand between him and the Sun set. Underfoot too a wilderness of beauty - fox gloves (I wonder if they grow in America) ferns - purple heath &c &c. - I dont suppose I shall see much more of him now I have left Haslemere. 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 - & especially of its comparative artness & 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 Wright at certain [*1451]seasons of the year - He is even morbidly sensitive on this point & will not stir beyond his own grounds from weeks end to weeks 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, good walker & familiar with every least frequented spot of hill & dale for some miles round, took him long rambles the 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 [?] 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 [*1483]too much even for a strong frame coming as it does, after twenty years of [very] hard work! Therefor please dear Friend, do not "warn" me any more. it hurts so, as seeing to distrust my love - There only can show how needlessly - [Book assured] My love, flowing ever fresh & fresh out of my heart, will go with you in all your wanderings dear Friend. enfolding you day & 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 news[paper] though I have had very friendly invitations, for I am a home bird - Don't like staying out - wanted at home & happiest there, and I should not enjoy being with them in the grand mansion half so much as I did pic-nicing in the wood & watching the builders as we did - It is pleasant to see T, with children - little girls at last - he does not take to boys - but one of my girls was mostly on his knee when they were in his room & he liked them very much. His two sons are now both 6 ft. high. - I have received some letters of March 20 from Brooklyn : but the one you speak of as having acknowledged the photograph never came [*1453]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 - "whose touches this, touches a man " - "I have put my Soul & Body into his Poem" ,. 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 and content, practical earnest, produce such real & tremendous effect - saturating her whole life, colouring every waking moment - filling her with such joys such such pains that the strain of them has been well nigh [*1454]paper (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 post mark will tell me where you are - And thus you will feel free only to write when you have leisure & inclination - & I shall [not] be spared that feeling [*1455]I have when I fancy my letters have not reached you as if [?] as hopeless 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 [?] with all their might. The school turns but more what I desire for them than I had ventured to hope. Good bye dearest Friend. Ann GilchristBut 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 our own time & mode - [no] but [the] for the simplest current details - for any thing that helps my eyes to pierce the distance & see you as you live & move today. I dearly like to hear about your mother - want to know of all 50 Marquis Rd. Camden, Sqe. London June 3 - 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 their Prof: Young who is so skillful [*1456]a worker with that most subtle [fitsker?]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 thy are made of. - The news from Deanak, that too - is a great pleasure. I have 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 one good & you too," write that letter [f] dear Friend after you have been to Dartmouth, for I souly 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 find their way to the Post. [*1457]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 learn 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 very importunate - To settle down where there are some that love you & understand your poems, some your sisters are married, & if you have plenty of little nephews & nieces - I like to hear anything about Mr. OConnor & Mr. Burroughs 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? Percy being a worker in the field of metallurgy make 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 results of the Cincinnati Convention & what of Mr. Greeley? & what you argue as to his success - I am sure dear Friend if [*1485]you realize the joy it is to me to receive a few words from you - about anything that is passing in your thoughts or 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 mightest literature what I felt three years ago is more than ever true now, with all their previous 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 this the future of my children to be shaped modified vitalized by & through these, outwardly & inwardly - How then can I be content to live wholly isolated from you? I [*1459]where that you would be sure to come pretty often - to have you sit with me while I worked, you silent, or reading to your self, 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 childrens [?] welfare dear I could be very happy so. But silence with the living presence [*1460*]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. Anne Gilchrist.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 more to me - How could such a dazzling radiance of light flooding the soul, and dearly kindling it to such an 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 heart, the yearning that seemed to strain the heart beyond enduance 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 [*1462]who made my inner life so divinely sweet & beautiful. But Dear Friend, I [am] have certainty 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 growth. I have will renew my youth. I have had the paper from Burlington - with the details a woman likes so to have. I wish I had known for certain whether you went 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 & 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 [the] what I experienced it would read like one of those old 'miracles" or myths. [?] of many things that used to appear to me incomprehensible lies. I now [*1463]nobly fulfils the promise of it's 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 rare that, (enriched with the blood & qualities of other races & planted down in the new half of the world reserved in all it's fresh beauty & exhaustless riches to be the arena) is to fulfill justify outstrip the vision of the Poets, the quenchless aspirations of all the ardent souls that that have ever struggled over and upon this earth. [*1462]for me, the most precious page in the book is that which contains the Deuteronomy 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 is the secret of a corresponding restless power over the reader wholly unprecedented unapproached in literature as I believe, & to be compared 50 Marquis Rd. Camden S.V. London. July 14/72 The 3' July was my rejoicing day, dearest Friend, - the day the packet from America reached me scattering for a while the clouds of pain & 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 & [*1461]very jolly" & his home in a "clean airy old farm house half way up a mountain in the midst of wild rough grand scenery, & the 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 [*1465]you as you will be gone to California - may it be a time full of enjoyment, full to the brim. [Deare?] Goodbye Dearest Friend Ann Gilchrist. What a noble achievement is Mr. Stanley's: it fills me with pleasure that Americans should thus have been the rescuer of a large hearted heroic traveller. We have just got his letters with account of the five cases in central Africa copied from N. Y. Herald. July 29amount 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 Anne Gilchrist. 50 Marquis Road Camden Sqre. Nov.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 remembrances [*1466]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 wanted be to California & the [the] peak importance of thought & curation 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 requirement [*1467][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 50 Marquis Rd Camden Sq. London Jan 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 month's silence which have followed seem [*1468]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 pains of looking my own faults & short-comings steadily in the face. Or it may be my words have led you to do me some kind of injustice in thought, - & then I 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 [*1469]this belief it would be a fall into utter blackness & despair, as one for whom the Sun in Heaven is blotted out. Goodbye Dearest Friend Annie Gilchrist. 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 [*1470]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 & 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 my 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 and includes all the aspirations all the [hop] high hopes I am capable of. And were I to fall, away from [*1471]on your birthday - What can I send you? - What can I tell you but the same old story of a heart fast - anchored - of a soul to whom your soul is as the Sun & the fresh sweet air, and the nourishing sustaining earth wherein the other one breathes free & feeds & expands & delights itself. There is no occupation of the day however homely that is not coloured, elevated, made more cheerful to me by thought of you & by thoughts you have 50 Marquis Road Camden Sqr. 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 hearts of that fine People which slumbered so long weighed down & tormented with hideous nightmares of [*1472]superstition. - Are you indeed getting strong & well again? able to drink in droughts of pleasure from the sights & sounds & perfumes of this delirious time, "lilac - time" - according to your wont? Sleeping well - eating well Dear Friend? William Rossetti is coming to see me Thursday, before starting for his holiday trip to Naples. His father was a Neapolitan who narrowly escaped a life long dungeon for having written some patriotic Songs - he fled in disguise help of English friends & spent the rest of his life here. So this, his first visit to Naples will be specially full of interest & delight to our friend. He is also in great spirits at having discovered a large number of hitherto unknown early letters of Shelley's. Of modern English poets Shelley is the one he loves & admires incomparably the most. - Perhaps this letter will just reach you [*1473]& comfort to you. I do not ask the When or the How. - I shall be thinking of your great & Dear Mother in her beautiful old age, too: on your birthday - happiest woman in all the world that she was & is: forever sacred & dear to America & to all who feed on the Poems of her Son. Good bye my best beloved Friend. Annie Gilchrist. I suppose you see all that you came to see in the way of English newspapers. I often long to send you one when there is anything in that I feel sure would interest you. but am withheld [from] [for] by fearing it worth be quite superfluous or troublesome even given me blent in & suffus -ing all: No hope or aim or practical endeavour for my dear children that has not taken a higher layer more joyous scope through you. My immortal aspirations, no thoughts of what lies beyond Death but centre in you. And in moods of pain and discouragement dear Friend I turn to that Poem beginning "Whoever you are holding me now in hand" and I Don't know but that that one revives & strengthens [*1474]me more than any. For there is not a line nor a word in it at which my spirit does not rise up instinctively and fearlessly say - So be it. And then I read the Poems & drink in the drought that I know is for me, because it is for all - the love that you give me on the broad ground of my humanity & womanhood. And I understand the reality & preciousness of that. Then I say to myself Souls are not made to be frustrated - to have their greatest & best & sweetest impulses and aspirations & yearnings made abortive. Therefore we shall not be "carried diverse" for ever. This dumb Soul of mine will not always remain hidden from you - but some say will [g] be given him for this love. this passion of gratitude, this set of all the waves of my being toward you, to bring joy [*1475]comforting vivifying warmth around you. Might but these words breathed out of the inmost heart of a woman who loves you with her whole soul & strength. fulfill their errand & comfort tho sorrowful heart, if ever so little - and through that help to revive the drooping frame! This love that has grown up far away over here. unhelped by the sweet influences of personal intercourse, penetrating the whole substance of a Earls Colue Halstead August 12. 1873 My dearest Friend The paper has just been forwarded here which tells me you are still suffering, and not, as I was fondly believing already quite emerged from the cloud of sickness. My Darling - let me use that tender caressing word once more. for how can I help it. with heart so full & no outlet but words? [*1476]My darling. I say it over & over to myself with voice with eyes so full of love, of tender yearning sorrowful longing love. I would give all the world if I might come / but am held here yet a while inexorably by a duty mostly [other] may supersede / & soothe & tend & wait on you & with much cheerful loving companionship left off some of the weight of the long hours & days & perhaps months that must still go over while nature is slowly, imperceptibly but still so surely repairing the mischief within, result of the tremendous ordeal to your frame of those great over brimming years of life spent in the Army Hospitals. You see dear Friend a woman who is a mother has thenceforth something of that feeling towards all men who are dear to her - [her] a cherishing fostering instinct that makes her rejoice so in all personal service to them. O I should be so happy it needs must diffuse a reviving [*1477] 1477have inhabited ceased to be a Priory at the Dissolution of monasteries - My Mother's health is still good - wonderful, indeed, for 88 though she has been 30 years crippled by rheumatism. Still she enjoys getting out in the sunshine in her Bath chair & is able to take pleasure in seeing her friends & in having us all with her. Her father was a hale man at 90. - These eastern counties are flat & tame but yet under this soft smiling summer sky lovely enough too - with woman's life, swallowing up into itself all her aspirations, hopes, longings, regardless of Death, looking earnestly confidently beyond that for fruition blending more or less with every thought & act of her life a guiding star that her feet cannot choose but follow resolutely - what can be more real than this dear Friend - what can have deeper roots, or a more immortal growing power within it? [And] But I do not [*1478]ask any longer whether this love is believed in & welcome & precious to you: for I know that what has real roots cannot fail to bear real flowers [that] and fruits that will in the end be sweet and joy giving to you; and that if I am indeed capable of being your eternal comrade- climbing wherever you climb, daring all that you dare, learning all that you learn, suffering all that you suffer/pressing closest then) enjoying all that you enjoy, you will want me. will not be able to help stretching out your hand & desiring me to you. I [write] have written this mostly out in the fields as I am so fond of doing - the serene beautiful harvest; land scape spread around, returned once more, as I have every summer for five & twenty years, to this old village where my mother's family have lived in unbroken succession three hundred years, ever since in fact, the old Priory they [*1479]may this find you by the sea shore - getting on so fast, - the friend you love best with you - comforted, refreshed soul and body - perfect harmony between these two restored once more - & that you step forth with strong & buoyant step to complete your great purpose. Good bye beloved friend Annie Gilchrist their rich delicious green meadows abundant golden corn crops now being well got in & thick by scattered old homesteaders each with gay garden, & pictures villages shaded by late elms. Even the sluggish little river Colne one cannot find fault with, it nourishes such a luxuriant border of solid flower as it creeps along, & turns & twists about from sunshine into shade and shade into sunshine so as to make the very best & most [*1480]of closely. But as to the human growth here. I think that perhaps more than anywhere else in England it struggles along choked & poison by dead things of the past still holding their place above ground. I did not see William Rossetti before I came down but heard that he had had a very happy time in Italy & splendid weather all the while - W. Conway & his wife & three [?] children are gone to Brittany for their holiday. My boys & girls are well - except indeed that I am afraid Percy finds his health somewhat affected by the constant inhaling of unwholesome gases analyzing ores all day long. but he is going to have better appliances in his laboratory which will I hope remove or lessen very much the evil. In other respects he likes his work & is getting good experience [*1481]you. Might but these words breathed out of the heart of a woman who loves you with her whole soul and life & strength fulfill their errand. & comfort the sorrowful heart, if ever - so little - & through that, revive the drooping frame. This love that has grown up, far away over here, unhelped by the sweet influences of personal intercourse, penetrating the whole substance of a womans life, swallowing up into itself all her aspirations, hopes longings, swallowing up into itself looking earnestly confidently beyond that for its fruition, Earls Colne Halstead August 12. 1873. My Dearest Friend The paper has just been forwarded here which tells me you are still suffering and not, as I was fondly believing, already quite energized from the cloud of sickness. My Darling! let me use that tender [ac] caressing word once more - for how can I help it, with heart so full & no outlet but words? [*1482]My Darling - I say it over & over to myself with voice, with eyes so full of love - of tender, yearning sorrowful longing love. I would give all the world if I might come, (but am held here, yet awhile by a duty nothing may supersede) & soothe & tend & wait on you & with such cheerful loving companionship lift off some of the weight of the long hours & days & perhaps months that must still go over while nature slowly imperceptibly, but still so surely repairs the mischief within: result of the tremendous ordeal to your frame of those great overbrimming years of life spent in the Army Hospitals. You see dear Friend, a woman who is a mother has thenceforth something of that feeling toward other men who are dear to her. a cherishing fostering instinct that rejoices so in tending nursing, caretaking. O I should be so happy, if needs must diffuse a reviving, comforting, vivifying warmth around [*1483]chair, & is able to take pleasure in seeing her friends - & in having us all with her. Her father was a hale man at 90. These eastern counties are flat & tame, but get under this soft smiling summer sky lovely enough too - with their rich green meadows & abundant golden corn crops, now being well got in. Even the sluggish little river Colne one cannot find fault with, it nourishes such a luxuriant border of wild flowers as it creeps along - & turns & thrusts blending more or less, with coy thought & act of her life - a guiding star that her feet cannot choose but follow resolutely - what can be more real than this, dear Friend? What can have deeper roots, or a more immortal growing power? But I do not ask any longer whether this love is believed in & welcome & precious to you. For I know that what has real roots cannot fail to bear real flowers and fruits that will [*1484]in the end be sweet & joy giving to you: And that if I am indeed capable of being your eternal Comrade, climbing whereever you climb, daring all that you dare, learning all that you learn, suffering all that you suffer (pressing closest then) [le] loving, enjoying all that you love & enjoy, - you will want me. You will not be able to help stretching out your hand & drawing me to you. - I have written this mostly out in the fields, as I am so fond of doing. The serene beautiful harvest landscape spread around - returned once more as I have every summer for five & twenty years to this old village, where my mothers family have lived in unbroken succession three hundred years, every since in fact the old Priory which they have inhabited, ceased to be a Priory. My mothers health is still good - wonderful indeed for 88, though she has been 30 years crippled with rheumatism Still she enjoys getting out in the sunshine in her Bath [*1485]well as over to Camden - I want it so to get to you - long & long so to speak with you - & the Camden one may never come to hand - or to Washington one might remain months unforwarded, it easy to tear up - I hope it will find you by the sea shore - getting on so fast toward health & strength again - refreshed & tranquilized soul & body, Good bye beloved Friend, Ann Gilchrist from sunshine into shade & from shade into sunshine so as to make the very best & most of itself. But as to the human growth here I think that more than any where else in England perhaps it struggles along choked & poisoned by dead things of the past still holding their place above ground. Carlyle calls the clergy black dragoons - in these rural parishes they are black squires, making it their chief business to instruct the labourer that his [*1486]grinding poverty & excessive toil, & the Squire affluence & ease are equally part of the sacred order of Providence. When I have been here a little I wish myself in London again, dearly as I love out door life companionship with nature. For though the same terrible & cruel facts are there - as here, they are not choked down your throat by any one, as a beautiful & perfect ideal. Even in England light is unmistakably breaking through the darkness for the Toilers. I did not see William Rossetti before I came down, but heard he had had a very happy time in Italy & splendid weather all the while. Mr. Conway & his wife & 3 children are gone to spend their holiday in Brittany - - Do not think me childish dear friend if I send a copy of this letter to Washington as [*1487]just strong enough prudently to undertake the journey. When my eyes first open in the morning, often such tender thoughts yearning ineffably pitying sorrowful sweet thoughts flow into my breast that longs & longs to [pl] pillow on itself the suffering head ( with white hair more beautiful to me than the silvery clouds which always make me think of it. - My hands want to be so helpful, tending, soothing, serving my whole frame to support the stricken side - O to comfort his heart - to diffuse round him such warm sunshine of love, helping time & thru unborn vigour of each organ that the disease could not Earls Colne Sept 4 - 1873 I am entirely satisfied & at peace my Beloved - no words can say how divine a peace. Pain and joy struggle together in me (but joy getting the mastery, because its portion is eternal) O the precious letter, bearing to me the living touch of your hand, vibrating through & through me as I feel the pressure the ring that pressed your flesh & now will press mine so long as I draw breath. My Darling! take comfort & strength & joy from me that you have made so rich [1488*]& strong. Perhaps it will yet be given us to see each other, to travel the last stage of this journey side by side, hand-in hand - so completing the preparation for the fresh start on the greater journey, me loving & blessing her you mourn, now for your dear sake, - then growing to know & love her in full unison with you - I hope you will soon get to the sea - as soon as you are strong enough that is - & if you could have all needful care & comfort & a dear friend with you there. For I believe you would get on faster away from Camden - & that it tends so to keep the wound open & quivering to be where the blow fell on you - where every object speaks of her last hours & is laden with heart stirring associations. Though I realize dearest Friend that in the midst of the poignant sorrow come immortal sweet moments communings, rapt anticipations. But these would come the same in natures great soothing arms by the sea shore with her reviving invigorating breath playing freely over you. If only you could get [strong] [*1489]withstand the influences, but healthful life begin to flow again through every part. My children send their love, their earnest sympathy - Do not feel anyways called on to write except when inwardly impelled, your silence is not dumb to me now - will never again cloud or pain, or be misconstrued by me. I can feast & feast, & still have wherewithal to satisfy myself with the sweet & precious words that now come & with the feel of my ring. [*1490]only send any old paper that comes to hand (never mind whether there is anything to read in it or not) just as a sign that the breath of love & hope [that] these poor words try to bear to you, has reached [you]. And just one literally that, word dearest, when you begin to feel you are really getting on, to make me so joyful with the news. Good bye dearest Friend Anne Gilchrist Back again in Marquis Road.the medical profession & as the Apoth; Hall certificate is accepted for the preliminary studies at Paris & Zurich I make no doubt it is also at Philadelphia & New York so that she would be be able to enter on medical studies then without preliminary work when we come. For she continues steadfastly desirous to win her way into that field of usefulness & I believe is well fitted to work there with her grave earnest thoughtful feeling nature & strong bodily frame. She is able to enjoy your Poems & the best as : broods over them a great deal. - Percy is bending his energies now to mastering the processes that go to the production of the very best quality of copper such as is used for telegraph wires &. No easy matter, copper being the most difficult, in a metallurgical point of view of all the metals to deal with & the Company in whose 50 Marquis Rd Camden Sq. Nov. 3'/73 London My dearest Friend, All the papers have reached me - [2] 3 separate packets (with the hand writing on them that makes my heart give a glad bound). I look through them full of interest & curiosity wanting to realize as I do in things small as well as things large my Land of Promise - the land where I hope to plant down my children - so strong in the faith that they, & perhaps still more those that (consciously or unconsciously, it doesn't matter which) that I should get out with a cheerful heart on that errand if I knew the first breath I drew on American soil, would be my last in life - [*1491]I searched hopeful for a few words telling of improvement in your health in the last paper. But perhaps it does not follow from there being no such mention that there is no progress. May you be steadily though ever so slowly gaining ground my Darling! Now that I understand the nature of the malady! a deficient flow of blood to the brain if it has been rightly explained to me, I realize that recoup must be very gradual: as the coming on of it must have been slow & insidious. And perhaps that dates even from before the war time with its tremendous strain emotional & physical & is part of the price paid for the greatness of the Poems & for their immortal Destiny - the rapt exaltation the intensity of joy & sorrow & struggle all that went to give them their life giving power. For I have felt many times in reading them as if the light & heat of their sacred fire must needs have consummate the vital energies of him in whose breast it has generated faster than even the most splendid physique could even tacitly. For our sakes, for humanity's sake you suffer now, I do not doubt, every bit as much as the soldiers wounds are for his country's sake. The more precious the more tenderly cherished, the more [fil?] drawing the hearts that understand with ineffable yearnings for this. My children all continue well in the main. I am thankful to say though Beatrice (the eldest girl, looks paler than I could wish & is working her brains too much & the rest of her too little just at present with the hope of getting through the Apothecaries Hall exam: in Art's next Sept. which involves a good bit of Latin and mathematics - This is all women can do in England toward getting into [*1492]of my farm than the photographs. Have you heard, I wonder, of William Rossetti's approaching marriage. It is to take place early in the new year. The lady is Lucy Brown daughter of one of our most eminent artists (he was the friend who first put into my hand the "Selections" from your Poems./ Lucy is a very sweet tempered cultivated lovable woman well fitted I should say to make William Rossetti happy. They are to continue in the old home Euston Sq. with W. Rossetti & the Sisters who are one & all fond of Lucy. I am glad he is going to be married for I think he is a man capable [of] both of giving and receiving a large measure of domestic happiness. - I hope the dear little girls at St. Louis are well - And you my Darling O surely the son is piercing through the dark clouds once more. and strength & health and gladness returning. O fill yourself with happy thoughts for you have filled others with joy & strength & will do so for countless generations. & from these hearts flows back & will ever flow a steady current of love & the beautiful fruits of love. When you rest send me a paper. if you feel that you are getting on ever so little dearest Friend put a dash under the word 'London' - I have [ha] looked back at all your old addresses & I see you never to put any lines, so I shall know it was not done absently but really means you are better and how that line will [*1494]gladden my eyes Darling! Love from us all. Good bye. Anne Gilchrist employ he his having hitherto been unsuccessful in this branch. His looks too, do not quite satisfy me: - it is partly rather too long hours of work, but still more not getting a good meal till the end of it. It is so hard to make the young believe that the stomach shares the fatigue of the rest of the body & that there is not nervous energy enough left for it to do all it's principal work to perfection after a long exhausting day. But I hope now I or rather his own experiences & I together have convinced him in turn & he promises me faithfully to arrange [after] a good meal in the middle of the day however much grudgingly the time - My little artist Herby is still chiefly working from the antique; but tries his hand at home occasionally with oils & the life & has made an oil sketch of me which though imperfect in drawing &c gives far more the real characteristics & expression [*1493]folded [d] ah what the sunshine will do! What fills me with such deep joy in your poems is the sense of the large complete acceptiveness - the full & perfect faith in humanity - 'in every individual unit of humanity' thus for the first time uttered. That alone satisfies the sense of justice in the soul, responds to what it's own nature compels it to believe of the infinite source of all. That too includes within its scope the lot as well 50 Marquis Rd. Camden Sq., N.W. Dec. 8 1873 My dearest Friend The paper with Prof: Young's speech came safely, & I read it, my hand in yours - happy and full of interest - Are you getting on My Darling? When I know that you no longer suffer from distressing sensations in the head & can move without such effort and difficulty a hymn of thankfulness will go up from my heart. Perhaps this week I shall [*1495]get the paper with the line on it that is to tell me so much - or at least that you are well on your way towards it. - And what shall I tell you about? The the quiet tenor of our daily lives here? but that is very restricted, though I trust as far as it goes, good & healthful. Or the thoughts and hopes that leap forward across the ocean & the years? But they hide themselves away when I want to put them into words. Do not think I live in dreams. I know very well it is strictly in proportion as the present & the past have been busy shaping & preparing the materials of a beautiful future. That it really will be beautiful when it comes to exist as a present, [?] [that] [are] [nor?] [planning?][of] [happiness] seeing how it needs must be entering a growth from all that has preceded it & that there are no sudden creations of flowers of happiness in men & women any more than in the fields But if the buds lie ready [*1496]half "possessing our own souls". But we grow, we learn we strive - that is the best of us. I think in the sunshine of your presence we shall grow fast I too, my years notwithstanding - May the new year lead you out into sunshine again - shed of out of its days health and strength so that you tread the earth in gladness again. This, with love from us all. Good bye dearest Friend Annie Gilchrist Herby was at a Conversation last night where were many distinguished men & beautiful women. Among the works of art display on the walls was a fine photograph of you. as the man. His infinite undying self must achieve and fulfill itself out of any & all experiences. Why if it takes such ages & such vicissitudes to compact a bit of rock - fierce heat, & icy cold storms deluges, crushing pressure & slow subsidences as if it were likely a handful of years & all Sunshine would do for a man! - Dect. 16 The longed for paper has come to hand. O it 'is' a [*1497]slow struggle back to health my Darling! I believe in the main it is good news that is come - and there is the little stroke I wanted so on the address. But for all that I feel troubled & anxious - for I believe you have been a great deal worse since you wrote - and that you have still such a steep steep hill to climb. Perhaps if my hand were in yours Dear Walt, you would get along faster - Dearer and sweeter that lot than even to have been your bride in the full flush & strength and glory of your youth I turn my face to the west ward sky before I lie down to sleep, deep & steadfast within me the silent aspiration that every year, every month & week may help something to prepare and make filler [?] me and mine to be your comfort and joy. We are full of imperfections short comings but half developed, but [*1498]16th. afternoon And now a later post has brought me the other No. of the graphic & with your own writing in it - so full of life & spirit so fresh & cheerful / vivid dear Friend it seems to scatter all anxious sad thoughts to the winds. And are you then really back at Washington I wonder or have you only visited [*1499]it is in spirit, & written the recollection of former evenings - I shall have none but cheerful thoughts now. I shall reread it carefully, read it to the young folk at tea tonight. responsive delight Leaves of Grass quite through, so that he now sees you with his own eyes & was in his heart the living growing germs of a looming admiration that will grow with his growth & strengthen every fibre of good in him - Also he read & took much pride in my "Letters" now shown him for the first time. [Also] Percy has had a fortnights holiday with us, and looks better [*26 Feb 1874*] 50 Marquis Rd Camden Sq. London My Dearest Friend Glad am I when the time comes round for writing to you again - though I can't please myself with my letters. poor little echoes that they are of the loving, hoping, far journeying thoughts so busy within. It has been a happy time since I [*1500]received the paper with the joyful news you were back at Washington, well on your way to recovery able partially to resume work, scenting from afar the fresh breeze & sunshine of perfect health - by this time, not from afar perhaps. The thought of that makes dull days bright & bright days glorious to me too. - I noticed in the New York Graphic that a new edition of Leaves of Grass was called for a sign only that America is not so very slowly upon absorbing the precious food she needs above all else? Perhaps dear Friend even during your lifetime will begin to come the "proof you will alone accept, - that "your country absorb you as affectionately as you have absorbed it" I have had two great pleasures since I last wrote you [you] one is that Herby has read with a large measure of [*1501]Time. I can bide my "time, - a long long growing & unfolding time that he draws me with such power, that my soul has found the meaning of itself in him - the object of all its deep deathless aspirations in comradship with him, means, if life is not a mockery clean ended by death, that the germs are in me, that through cleaving & loving & ever striving up & on I shall grow like him - like but different - the correlative - What his soul need & desires in health though still not altogether as I could wish. He says he is getting such good experience he would not care just yet to change his post even for better pay. Music is his greatest pleasure - he seems to get more enjoyment out of that than out of literature, & is acquiring some practical skill Today Feb 25th, is my birthday dearest Friend - a day my children always [*1502]make very bright & happy to me: and on it they make me promise to "do nothing but what I like all day". So I shall spend it with you. - partly [f] in finishing this letter, partly reading in the book that is so dear to me - for that is indeed my soul coming into the presence of your soul - filled by it with strength & warmth & joy. - In discouraged moods when oppressed with the consciousness of my own limitations failures, lack of many beautiful gifts, I say to myself "What sort of "a bird with unfledged "wings are you that would "mate with an [eagll] eagle? "can your eyes look the "sun in the face like his? "Can you sustain a year "long, lifelong flights "upward? Can you "nest in dizzy rocks "overhanging dark tempestuous "abysses? Is "your heart like his, a "great glowing sun of love? then I answer "Give me [*1503]into poems for me. Goodbye my dearest Friend. Ann Gilchrist W. Rossetti's marriage is to be the end of next month. Had a pleasant chat with W. Conway who took supper with us a week or two ago - "and if when I reach America, he is not so drawn towards me. - if seeing how often I disappoint myself, needs must that he too is disappointed still I can hold bravely, lovingly on to this inextinguishable faith & hope- with the added joy of his presence sometimes, winning from him more & more a dear friendship yielding him some joy [*1504*] & comfort - for he too turns with hope, with yearning towards me bids me "satisfied & at peace" So I am, so I will be my Darling surly say [too] sooner or later I shall justify that hope satisfy that yearning. This is what I say to myself & to you this 46th birthday Have I said it over & over again? That is because it is the under current of my whole life. - The "Tribune" with Proctors Lecture or the Sun" (& a great deal besides that that interests me came safe. A masterly lecture. And two days ago came to the Philadelphia paper with Prof. Morton's speech, deeply interesting. And as I read these things the feeling that they have come from & been read by you turns them [*1505]March 9th 1874 With full heart, with eyes met with tears of joy & I known not what other deep emotion- pain or yearning pity - blent with the sense of grandeur, dearest Friend have I read and re read the great sacred poem just come to me. O august Columbus! whose sorrows sufferings struggles and more to beenvied than any triumph of conquering warrior - as I see him in your poem his figure merges into yours, brother of Columbus. Completer of his work, discourser of the spiritual, the ideal America. You too have sailed over storming seas to your goal surrounded with mocking disbelievers - you to have paid, the great price of health - our Columbus. Your accents pierce me through through. You're loving Annie. 1507duties is the zest, the keen relish it gives to the hours not too easy secured for reading & music. Besides, I often think that just as the poem Nature is made up half of rude rough realities & homey materials & processes so it is necessary for women to construct their poem, Home, [of] on a groundwork of homeliest details & occupation, providing for the bodily wants & comforts of [their] household; and that without putting her own hand to his, his Poem will [take] back the vital fresh growing nature-like quality that alone endures, and that of this soil will grow, with fitting 50 Marquis Rd. Camden Sq. May 14. 1874 My dearest Friend Two papers have come to hand since I last wrote; one containing the memoranda made during the war - precious records, eagerly read and treasured & sacred by me. How the busy days slip by one so like another, yet each with its own fresh and pleasant flavour & scent [?] as like and as different as the leaves on a tree, or the plants in the hedgegrows Days, they are busy with humble enough occupations, but lit up for me not only with the light of hope, but with the half hidden joy of one who knows she has found what she sought and laid such strong hold upon it that she fears nothing, questions nothing, - in[?] life [n]or death, nor, in the end, in her own imperfections flaws, shortcomings. For to be [*1508]so conscious of these, and to love and understand you so are proof the germs of all are in her & perhaps in the warmth & joyous sunshine of your presence would grow fast. Any how, distance has not baffled her and time will not. A great deal of needlework to be done at this time of year, for my girls have not time for any at present; it is not a good contrast or the right thing after longish hours of study - much better household activity - of any sort. If they would but understand this in schools & colleges for girls & young women! No healthier or more cheerful occupation as a relief from study, could be found than household work, sweeping scrubbing, washing, ironing cooking - in the variety of it, & equable development of the muscles, I should think equal to the most elaborate gymnastics I know very well how I have felt & still feel the want of having been put to these things when a girl. Then the importance afterwards of doing them easily & well & without undue fatigue to all who aim to give practical shape to their ardent belief in equality & fair play for all! In domestic life under one roof at all events it is already feasible to make the "disposals, without ignominious distinctions, - not all the rough bodily work never ending, still beginning : to [?] and the mental culture and abundant leisure all to the other - but a wholesome interchange and sharing of these. Not least too among the advantages of taking an active share in these [*1509]cate them I have. Mr. & Ms. Conway & their children are well - Eustace is coming to spend the afternoon with Herby to morrow. Goodbye my dearest Friend Ann Gilchrist preparation & culture a noble & more vigorous intellectual life in women, fit & embody itself in wider spheres afterwards - if a the call comes. This month of May that comes to you so laden with great and sorrowful & beautiful & tender memories, and that is your birth month too. I cannot say that I think of you more than at any other time, for there is no month nor day that my thoughts do not habitually & spontaneously turn to you, refer all to you: [but] yet I seem to come closer because of the Poems that tell me of what relates to that time; but most of all when I think of your beloved Mother, because then I often yearn more than I [*1510]know how to bear to comfort you with love and tender care and silent companionship May is in a sense (& a big real one, my birth month too, for in it were your Poems first put into my hand. - I wish as I were 'quite sure' that you no longer suffer in your head, and that you can move about without effort or difficulty - perhaps before long there will be a paper with some paragraph about your health. for though we say to ourselves no news, is good news, it is a very different thing to have the absolute affair motion of good news. My children are all well and hearty I am thankful to say, & working industrially. Grace means to study the best system of Kinder Garten teaching - I [?] fancy she is well suited for Kinder garten teaching & that it is [a] very excellent work - Herby is still drawing from the Antique in the British Museum. I hope he will get into the Academy this summer. He is going to spend his holiday with his brother in South Wales - and we as usual at Colue, but that will not be till August. Did I tell you William Rossetti and his bride were spending their honey moon at Naples and have found it bitterly [*1511]all. 6th This very morning has come the answer to my question - [?] First I only saw the Poem - read it so elate - soared with it to joyous heights - said to myself - he is so well again. he is able to take the journey into Massachusetts & [read] speak these kindling words - Then I turned over and my joy was dashed. My Darling! such patience yet needed along the tedious path! Oh it makes me long with 50 Marquis Rd. Camden SQ July 4 - 1874 My dearest Friend. Are you well and happy and enjoying this beautiful summer? London is in one sense, a sort of big prison at this time of year: but still at a wide open window with blue sky opening to me too & a soft breeze blowing [*1512]in & the Book that is so dear - my life-giving treasure. open on my lap. I have very happy times. No one hundreds of years hence will find deeper joy in these poems than I - breathe the fresh sweet exhilarating air up with them, bathe in it, drink in what nourishes & delights [my] the whole being, body intellect & soul. more than I. Nor could you. when [hav] writing them have desired to come nearer to a human being & be more to them for ever & for ever than you are will be to me. O I take the hand you stretch out, each day. I put mine into it with a sense of utter fulfillment : I ask nothing more of time and of eternity but to live and grow up to that companionship. that includes [*1513]than does the sense of your excellence enter like bright light into my awaiting soul. And then I send to you thoughts tender caressing thoughts that would fain nestle so close - ah if you could feel them, take them in, let let them lie in your breast each morning. My children are all well dear Friend. Herbert is going to spend his holiday with his brother in Wales - & we shall all go to Colue as usual the end of this month, & remain there through August and September passionate longing with yearnings. I know not how to bear, to come; to be your loving cheerful companion, the one to take such care, to do all for you. to beguile the time. to give you of my health as you have done to tens of thousands. I do not doubt either. but that you will get well. I feel sure, sure it will be given me to see you And perhaps a very slow gradual recovery is safest is the only way in this as in other matters. to [*1514]thoroughness & a very speedy rally would [have] be specious treacherous in the end, leading you to do what you were not yet fit for. I believe if I could only make you conscious of the love, the enfolding love my heart breathes out toward you, it would do you physical good. many sided love mothers love that cherishes, that delights so in personal service that sees in sickness & suffering such dear appeals to an answer my limitless tenderness: - wifes love - ah you draw that from me too, resistlessly - I have no choice, - comrades love, so happy in sharing all. ,pain sorrow toil, effort enjoyments though the hopes aims, struggles, disappointments, beliefs, aspirations. Childs love too that trusts utterly, confides unquestioningly. - Not more spontaneously & wholly without effort or volition on my part does the sunlight flow into my eyes when I open them in the morning [*1515]liked that Springfield paper very much. Your loving Anne so if you think of it, address any paper you may send Earls Colue, Halstead - because I should get it a day sooner - But it does not signify if you forget & send it here - it will be forwarded all right. Beatrice has just got through one of the Govern: Examination [mathen] elementary mathematics and I hope Herby has got into the Academy, but do not know for certain yet. He works away zealously and with great delight in his work. William [*1516]Rossetti and his wife are coming to dine with us Wednesday. They look so well & happy it does one good to see them. The Conways are going to Ostend I think for this holiday, & when they come back going to move into a larger house. I heard an American lady Miss Whinery sing at a concert the other day who delighted me, fascinated me - I longed to kiss her after each song, though some of them were poor enough Verdi stuff - but she contrived to impart genuineness & beauty to them. I hope you will hear her when she returns to America, which will be soon I believe. Good bye dearest Friend - Beatrice Herby & Grace join their love with mine. I had the sweet little Bridal Poem all safe & by to bye I [*1547]the Navigator Islands where he remained for six months the only white man among savages who were friendly & made much of him now, come into a good estate, married to a woman who seems to suit him well & is healthy, cheerful rich & handsome he has fallen into indifferent health & considerable depression of spirits. Perhaps he finds the atmosphere of Squirearchical gentility very stagnant the bed of roses stifling - perhaps too the severe privations he has at different times undergone have injured him. I often think he was perhaps one of those your eyes rested on with pride & admiration "handsome tan faced, dressed in blue", he is the very [pr] ideal of a soldier in appearance & bearing - he now has some fine children of whom he is very fond. It was just this time year I received the precious letter and ring that put peace and joy and yet such pain of yearning into my Earls Colue Sept. 3. 1874 My dearest Friend The change down here has refreshed me more than usual and I find my mother still wonderful for her years, her 89th, able to get out daily in her Bath chair for two or three hours - to enjoy our being with her, and suffering little or no pain from rheumatism now. - I hope you have had as glorious a summer & harvest as we have and that you are able to be much out of doors and absorb the health giving influences dear Friend. Such mornings! So fresh and invigorating. I have been before breakfast mostly in a beautiful garden (his old Priory garden) with my beloved Poems and the dew laden flowers and liquid light and sweet fresh air, & the sparkle of the pond & delicious greenness of the meadows beyond & rustling trees and had a joyful time with you my Darling - Sometimes with thoughts that lay hold on the solid prizes of the Universe sometimes so busy building up a home in America, thinking, dreaming, [*1518]hoping, loving, groping among dim shadows, straining wistful eyes into the dim distance - then to my Poems again - ah! not groping then but hand in hand with you breathing the air you breathe, with eyes ardently fixed in the same direction your eyes look, heart-beating strong with the same hopes, aspirations yours beats with. It does not need to be American to love America and to believe in the great future of humanity there; it is enough to be human, still more English, to do that. I love & believe in & understand her in & through you; but was always drawn toward her, always a believer though in a vaguer way that a new glorious day for men & women was dawning there; and recognized a new distinctive American quality very congenial to me even in American works whom you not perhaps rate highly or regard as decisively national, not adequately or commandingly so at any rate. - Did I ever tell you the Cousin of mine who now owns the Priory here fought for two years in the Succession war in the army of the Potomac when Burnside & M'Clellan were at the head? John Carwardine was Major in a Cavalry regiment - was at Vicksburg, Fredericksburg &c. never wounded, or but slightly - had a good deal of out post duty, being just the right sort of man for that & has letters of approval from his Generals of which he is not a little proud. Before that fought under the Stars & Stripes in Mexico & has had a curiously adventurous [life] career which he commenced by running away from a military college where he was being prepared for a cadetship & enlisting as a private - getting out of there by & bye and working his way before the mast as a sailor - then mining in California - then in Australia riding steeple chases. Keeper of the Melbourne hounds, market gardening, hotel keeping - then on his way back to California cast ashore on one of [*1519]good by my dearest Friend Herby, the only one here with me, would like to join his love with mine. Anne Gilchrist. I go back the beginning of October. Sep. 14th heart - pain for you my Darling of sorrows helpless love that waits and must wait useless, afar off. While you suffer - But trying every day of my life to grow filler more capable of being your comfort and joy and true comrade - never to cease trying this side death or the other - rejoicing in my children more than I can rejoiced in them before [since] now that in and through you I for the first time see and understand humanity (myself included) its divine nature, its possibilities, nay its certainties. How I do long for you to see my children dear Friend, and for them to see and love you as they will love you, and all their nature unfold and grow more vigorously and joyously under your influence. Gracie [*1520]of whom you have photographs, grows fast, - is such a fine blooming girl & I hope soon to send you one of Beatrice too. They have been enjoying their visit here and are now gone home. Grace for school, Beatrice for the examination at Apoth. Hall she is hoping to get through. Then she is coming here to be with my Mother & I going back to London: we mean now one or other of us always to be with my Mother here. Herby has had such a happy time with his brother in Wales - & is looking as brown as a nut & full of health & life - he had a swim in the sea every day - He did succeed in getting into the Academy! & will begin work there Oct. 1st! - I received the welcome sign from you & the papers with it deeply interesting narration of the Polaris & much else - Be sure dear Friend if there is a word about your health in any paper, to send it to me - that is what I search for so eagerly - to hear the joyful news you are getting on - but even if it is but so very very slowly still. I would rather know the truth - I do not like thinking of you mistakenly I want to send you the thoughts the yearnings that belong to you the cherishing love that enfolds you most tenderly of all when you suffer - O if I could send it! and the cheerful companionship beguiling the time while strength creeps back - I hope your little nieces at St. Louis are well [*1521]stirs in me a cloud of questions, makes me want to see its relationship to what I hold already. I am for ever brooding pondering, sifting, testing - but that is not the bent of mind that enables one to reproduce one's impression in comfort & lively form. So please dear Friend, be indulgent as indeed I know you will be, [t] of these poor letters of mine with their details of my children & their iterated & reiterated expressions of the love and hope and aspiration 50 Maquis Rd. Camden Sq. London Dec. 9. 1874 My dearest Friend It did me such good to get your Poem - beautiful earnest eloquent words from the soul whose dear companionship mine seeks with persistent longing wrestling with distance & time. It seems to me, too, from your having spoken the Poem [*1522]yourself I may conclude you have made fair progress. What I would fain know is whether you have recovered the use of the left side so far as to get about pretty freely, and to have as much open air life as you need & like; and also whether you have quite ceased to suffer distressing sensations in the head. If you can say yes to the first question, will you in sign of it put a dash under the word 'London', & if yes to the second under 'England' when you next send me a paper? unless indeed the paper itself contain a notice of your health. But if it does not that would be an easy way of gladdening me with good news, if good news there is. I wish I could send you good letters, dearest Friend, making myself the vehicle of what is stirring around me in life & thought that would interest you; for there is plenty to do - though I watch hear, read eagerly full of interest. Everything [*1523]many dear friends round you at Camden - I think my thoughts fly to you on strongest and most joyous wings when I am but walking in the clear cold elastic air I enjoy so much. Good bye my dearest Friend Anne Gilchrist A cheerful Christmas, a new year of which each day brings its share of restorative influences be yours. you have called into life within me; take them not for what they are but for all they have to stand for - Beatrice is at Colue (having got well through the exam: we were anxious about in the autumn) and is a very great comfort to my Mother - as I well know she would be; for a more affectionate devoted, care - taking nature does not breathe - with a strong active mental life of her own too - So, though missing her sorely, I am [*1524]well satisfied she should be there: & the country life & rest are doing her a world of good. My artist boy is working away cheerily at the R. Academy, his heart in his work. [Percy] [?] is coming to spend Xmas with us - he too continues well content with his work and in good health. Gracie is blooming. The Rosetti's have had a heavy affliction this first year of their married life in the preventative death of her only brother - a young man of considerable promise - barely 20. The Conways are well. I feel more completely myself than I have done since my illness - so you see dear friend if it has taken me quite four years to recover the lost ground one must not be discouraged if two do[es] not accomplish it in your case. - I hope your little nieces at St Louis are well - and the brother you are with: and that you have [*1525]dwell in all their lives But for all that I do not believe the precious seed is lying dormant even now - every where a few in whose hearts it is treasured & yields a noble growth Since it is America that has produced you nourished your soul and body. She is silently unnoticed producing men & women who will justify you who will understand[ing] the meaning of all and respond with 50 Marquis Rd Camden SV. Dec 30 1874 I see, my dearest Friend, I must not look for those dashes under the words I thought were going to convey a joyful confirmation of my hopes. I see how the dark clouds linger. Full of pain & indignation. I read the paragraph - but fuller still of yearning tenderness & trust and hope. I believe my dear love that what you need to help on your recovery is awoman's tender cherishing love and care and that in that warm genial atmosphere the spring of life [would] will be quickened once more and flow full and strong through all its channels as of old, gradually, not quickly even so, I dare say: but with plenty of patience; with utmost intelligent care of all conditions favorable to health, of diet, of abundant oxygen in the rooms you inhabit - of as much out door life as possible, of happy cheerful companionship & all the homely every day domestic joys which are so healthful in their influences. America is doing what nations in all times have done towards that which profoundly new & great that which discredits their old ideals and offers them strange fruits & flowers from another world than that they have been content to much provided they have plenty of out door exercise - above all skating, which they are now enjoying. I too like it, but am so haunted by the thought of the increased misery it brings to our hundred of thousands of ill fed ill clothed ill housed. - I trust the family circle round you & your nieces at St Louis & all most dear to you are well, and that you have felt the warm grasp of many loving friends this wintry cloudy time my dearest - and that there may breathe out of these poor words a warm bright glow of 'love' and hope & unshakable trust in [?] these godlike read- a love that will quicken & exult humanity as Christ's influence once did. Still it is inscrutable to me that the heart of America is not now passionately drawn towards the great heart that beats & glows in those Poems, - that Drum Taps at any rate are not as dear to her as the memory of her dead heroes sons brothers husbands. It must be that they really do not search the hands of the American people at large - that the professedly literary cultivated class [*1528]asking for nothing better than the pretty sing song sentimentalities which "join them in their nonsense" or else slavishly prostrating their judgements before the models of the past (so perfect for their day, so wholly inadequate for ours) raise their voices so loud in news papers & magazine as to prevent or every where check the circulation Jan 1. The new year has come in bleakly & keenly - to the inner as well as to the outer sense. with the papers full of the details of the dark fate of the emigrant ship & of the terrible railway accident. Percy was not able to join us a Xmas (through business) but I am expecting him tonight. My Mother bears up against the cold wonderfully - & even continues to go out in her Chair - so Bee's letters are very bright & cheerful - she & indeed all my children enjoy the cold [1529*]glows throughout the Poems is for me an exhaustless source of strength & comfort - I see ever[y] now & then & like the more each time the Conways. I am half afraid Mr Conw[ay] works too incessantly - that is does not like well enough the indispensable [corrective] supplement of close mental work - plenty of air & exercise - he hates walking & indeed it is not to be wondered at in great smoky London (I shall be fond enough & proud enough if it too where I am over the Atlantic) unless one has a real passion for open air & the sense of sky overhead, like me. I hear Mr Conway is coming to America for six months in October. Feb 25 - I kept my letter till today that I might have the happiness of speaking to you on my birthday. See [me] this evening in the bright cheerful parlour of our cottage which stands just in the middle of the old village (it has Earls Colue, Halstead Feb 21 1876 My dearest Friend I have run down to Colue for a glimpse of my dear Bee whom I have not seen for five months, & of my Mother. I now am alone with the letter, Beatrice taking my place at home with her brother & sister for a week or two. A wonderful Evergreen my Mother continues; still able to face the keen winds & the frost daily in her Bath Chair well swathed of course in eider down & flannels Beatrice takes beautiful care of her & is happy & content with her life here. loving the country as dearly as I do & having time enough for study & reading as well as for domestic activities to keep her mind as busy as her body. How I do long for you to see my children, dearest Friend. I wonder if you are surrounded with any in your brother's home - young growing 1530blossoming plants that gladde[n] you. And I wonder if the winter which I hear is so severe in America th[is] year, tries you - whether you can yet move briskly enough to keep up the circulation - and whether you have as many dear friends round you as you had at Washington. In my walks I keep thinking of these things Write me a little letter once more, it would do me such good. No on[e] of all your friends is easy as I to write to because none to whom any & every detail is so welcome, so precious, lifting a tiny corner of this great vast of space between us giving me for a moment to feel the friendly grasp of your hand, I that long for it so. - Two years [?] ever since your illness began or seemed to begin dearest friend - so slow & stealthy in its retreat - may the Spring that is coming (the birds have have already caught sight of it, cold & brown & bare as the landscape still is) may it but come laden with healing strengthening refreshing influences - so that you begin to feel again the joyous freedom of health warbling once more a song of joy for Lilac time True I know indeed my dearest that any how you are content, not grudging the price paid for your life work. but even some way or other the riches for paying it garnering precious equivalents for pain & privation of health in your inmost soul. I cannot choose but believe this earnestly - the resplendent faith that there is not "one cause or result lamentable at last, in the Universe" which 15B1'Catechism of the Losomotive' 73 Broadway N.Y Office Railroad Gazette #(I think [won?] 81) 118 [written in] written [ln] in for memory of the good times Sunday evening's in Penn street, 1875 - '4 & '3 [*1533A] been a village & jogged on through all change [?] at it's own sober sleepy pace this 800 years) my mother in her arm chair by the fire, I chatting with her & working or playing to her when she is awake, & with the Poems I love beside me reading musing pondering while she dozes. Oh shall I ever attain to the Ideal that burst upon me with such splendour of light & joy in those Poems in 1869 - 20 filling so possessing me I seemed as if I had by one bound attained to that ideal - as if I were already a very twin of the soul from whom they emanated. But now I know that divine foretaste indicated what was possible for me not what was accomplished I know the slow growth - the stand still winters that follow [*1532]the growing joyous springs & ripening summers. I believe it will take more lives than this one to reach that mountain on which I was transfigured again never to descend more, but to start thence for new heights, fresh glories Ah dear Friend will you be able to have patience with me, for me? Good bye my Dearest Anne Gilchrist 1533 was in hopes & so was I, that if I went down, I might get sense enough into their head if not kindness & sympathy into their hearts, to see that the sole effect of such arbitrary & narrow sights conduct would be to alienate & embitter the young peoples feelings toward them. While it would make them more restless & anxious to marry without adequate means where as if a reasonable amount of intercourse were allowed it would be a happy time with them, & Norah being still so young. (18) & Percy, - 50 Marquis Rd. Camden S.Q. London May 18. 1875 My dearest Friend. Since last I wrote to you at the beginning of April (enclosing a little photograph of the avenue just by our cottage at Colne) I have been into Wales for a fortnight to see Percy & have looked, for the first time in my life, on the Atlantic - the ocean my mental eyes travel open & beyond so often. and that your eyes and ears & heart have been fed by, have communed with and interpreted as in a new tongue to the soul of man. Looking upon that, watching the tides ebb & flow, that ebb & flow on your shores, sharing, through my [*1534]beloved book, in those greatest moments you have spent alone with it - that was a new joyful experience, a fresh kind of communicating with you. - I went to Wales because I felt anxious about Percy who is not happy just now. I must not tell friends here about it [but I] (except his brother & sisters but I am sure I may tell you, for you will listen with sympathy. He has attached himself very deeply, I think it will prove, to a girl, & she to him, whose parents [W] welcomed him cordially to their house for a year or two & allowed plenty of intercourse till they became aware, through Percy himself who thought it right to tell the father, as soon as he was fully aware of his own duty & fully aware of his own duty & more than suspected Norah's response to him) that this was a strong affection grown up between the two. Then they peremptorily forbad all intercourse, - not because they have any objection to Percy - quite the contrary they say; but solely and simply because he is not yet earning money enough to marry on, & they hold that a man has no right to engage a girls affection till he can do so. As if these things could be timed to the moment the money comes in! Percy [*1535] This will reach you on your birth day perhaps my dearest Friend; at any rate it must bear you a greeting of love and fond remembrance for that dear day such as my heart will send you when it actually comes: patiently waiting heart, with the fibers of love and bound his trust & joy & hope which bind me to you bedded deep, grown to be during these long years, a very part of its immortal substance untouchable by age or varying moods or sickness: or Death itself as I surely believe. I long more than words can tell to know how it fares with you [?]now in health & spirit. My children are all well & growing & unfolding to my hearts content. Beatrice & Herbert deeply influenced by your Poems. Good bye my dearest Friend. A. Gilchrist working away with all his might, doing very well for his age & sure, conscientious thorough capable & well trained worker that he is (for the L. School of Mais gives a first-rate scientific preparation for his profession) to be making a modest sufficiency in a year or two. Well, they were very courteous & indeed friendly to me & I think I have won over the mother but the father remains obdurate, & Percy feels bitterly the [*1536]separation - all this more trying as they live almost within sight of each other. So Beatrice & Gran are going to spend their holidays with him this summer to cheer him up. Meanwhile dear friend I am on the whole happier than not about him. I liked what I saw of Norah & believe he has found a very sweet affectionate girl of quiet domestic nature, practical industrious sensible - thoroughly well to suit him, & that there is true & deep love between them. also she took to me very much & I feel will be quite another child to me. It is besides no little joy to me to find how Percy has confided in me in this & chosen me as the friend to whom he with all - far from being any separation as some time happens this love of his seems to draw us closer together. Only I am very very anxious for his sake to see him in a bitter berth - they wont let her marry him on £300 a year; now he has only £175. He is quite competent to manage iron or copper or tin works. only he looks so young, not having yet any beard or mustache to speak of. That is the end of my long story. [*1537]O the comfort your dear letter was & is to me. [I t] Thinking over & over the few words you say of yourself - & what is said in the paper (so eagerly read - every word so welcome) I cannot help fancying that the return of the distressing sensations in the head must be caused by your having worked at the book - "Two Rivulets" - & the idea of bringing the Poems prose (I dearly [love?] the title) together & must be more patient with yourself and submit still to perfect rest - & that perhaps in regard to the stomach- you have not enough adapted your diet to the privation of exercise. that you must be more indulgent to the stomach too in the sense of giving it only the very easiest & simplest work to do your own loving Annie my children join their love with mine. address Earls Colue. 1 Torriano Gardens Aug. 28. 1875 Camden Road N.W. London My Dearest Friend Your letter came to me just when I needed the comfort of it - When I was watching and tending my dear Mother as she gently, slowly, but with little suffering, sank to rest. There was no sick bed to sit by - We got her up and out into the air and sunshine for an hour or two even the day before she died - no [1538*]disease, only the stomach could not do its work any longer & for the last three weeks she lived wholly on stimulants, suffering somewhat from sickness. She drew her last breath very gently before daybreak on the 15th with in her 90th year which she had entered in June. She looked very beautiful in death, notwithstanding her great age - as well she might - tranquil sunset that it was of a beautiful day - a fulfilled life. joy and delight of her father in youth (who used to call her "the apple of his eye") good wife, devoted, self [a] sacrificing, wise mother, patient courageous suffered through thirty years of chronic rheumatism which however neutralized & [indeed] ceased its pain. The last few years /. unsurpassed and indeed I think unsurpassable in conscientiousness - in the strong sense of duty & perfect obedience to that mightiest sense - she is one of those who amply justify your large faith in women. I do not need to tell you anything my dearest friend - you know all - I feel your strong comforting hand - I press it very close. I had all my children with me at the funeral - 1539 /76 is out they will be able to marry. I see and indeed I have know ever since he formed this attachment that I must not look for him to come to America with me. But what I build upon Dearest Friend is that when I have been a little while in America I have made friends & had time to look about me I might hear of a good certainty for him - his excellent training at the Lond. Sch. of Mines, large experience at Blenavon energy ability & sturdy uprightness will make him a first rate manager of Works by & by 1 Torriano Gardens Camden Rd. Nov. 16 1875 London. I have been wanting the comfort of a talk with you dearest Friend for weeks & weeks without being able to get leisure & tranquility enough to do it to my hearts content - [for] indeed hearts content is not for me at present: but restless eager longing to come & the struggle to do patiently & completely & wisely what remains for me here before I am free to obey the deep faith and love which governor me - so let me sit close beside you my Darling - & feel your presence & take comfort & strength & serenity from it. As I do, as I can. when with all my heart & soul I draw close [*1540]you realizing your living pressure with all my might. - First about Percy - things are beginning to look a little brighter for him. He is just entering upon a new engagement [?] [?] [?] large & successful works - the Blenavon Iron Co: where, though his salary will not be higher at first his opportunities of improvement will be better & he is also to be allowed to take private practice (in assaying & analyzing) The manager there believes in Science & is friendly to Percy & will give him every facility for showing what he can do so that he hopes to prove to the Directors before long that he is worth a good salary. The parents of Norah (whom he loves) have released from their unfriendly attitude & since my Beatrice has been staying with him the two girls have attached themselves to one another & Per has had delightful opportunities being with Norah, & best of all she is to return here with Beatrice (they are coming tomorrow) & Per is to have a weeks holiday & coming up so that he & Norah will be wholly together & have I suspect, the happiest week they have yet had in their lives. Then I have stored away for them the furniture of the dear old home at Colne & I really think that by the time [*1541]altogether, knowing that you would make the very best of yourself & indeed be probably at your best with the pleasure of seeing an old friend fresh from England & also that his is to Nov. 30. And now dear Friend I have had a great pleasure indeed thanks to you - a visit from Mr Marvin, & hope to have another when he returns from Paris. And the account he gives of you is so cheerful, so vivid - it seems to part asunder a gloomy cloud that was brooding in my mind. And though I know that for the short hours that you feel bright & well are many long hours when you are far otherwise still I [can] feel sure those short hours are the earnest of perfect recovery - with a fine patience boundless patience. And now I can - imagine you sitting in your favorite But the leaving him so happy with his young wife will make it easier for us to part - Nov. 26 Beatrice has begun to work at anatomy at the school of Medicine for Women lately founded. & seems to delight in her work. She will not enter on the full course all at once - I am for taking things gently. Women have plenty of strength but it is of a different kind from mens & must work by gentler & slower means - Above all I do not like what pushes violently aside domestic duties & pleasures. The special work must combine itself with these & am sure it can. Herby is getting on very nicely. never did student love his work better. He is eagerly by making the best use of present opportunities & advantages [*1542]yet looking towards America full of cheerful hopes & sympathy. Grace is less developed in intellect but not less in character than the others. I can't describe her but send you her photograph. There is a freshness & independence of character about her - yet with that a certain waywardness & reserve. She is a good instinctive judge of character - more influenced by it than books - yet with a growing taste for them too. She comes to America with a gay and buoyant curiosity. Declining to make up her mind about anything till she gets there. We want, as far as possible to transplant our home bodily - to bring as much as we can of of am from furniture because we have beautiful old things precious in Horly's eyes & that we are all fond of. And coming straight to Philadelphia & taking a house somewhere in the outskirts of it a Camden immediately we fancy this might be practicable, but have not yet conferred with this matter - I have just heard from Mr Rossetti, & also from Mrs Conway of her husband having seen you. & if his report be not too sanguine it is a cheering one & wanted comfort the much Dearest Friend. But what he says is so favorable I am afraid to [mak] believe it [*1543]window, having a friendly word with passers by - & feel quite sure that you are happy - comfortable in your surroundings And a great deal else full of interest Mr Marvin told me I was loth for him to go, but one hour is so small we have noted for a friend I am sorry to say. William Rossetti has a little girl which is a great delight to him. Miss Hilliard of Brooklyn has also paid me a visit - & spoken to me of you - She charms me much - only I felt a little cross with her for giving Herby such a dismal account of his charms as an artist in America - [*1544]However we both refused to be discouraged - for after all he can send his pictures to England to be established &c. having plenty of friends who want to see to it - & we are both firm in the faith that if you can only paint the really good picture the rest will take care of itself somehow or other - & that can be done as well in America as in England - but of course he must finish his training here - With best love from us all Good bye my dearest Friend Anne Gilchrist would help I know. Soon soon as ever my boy has one to love & care for him all his own. I will come, I may not before, not if it should break my heart to step away from you, for his welfare is my sacred charge. O dearer & dearer than all to me verily my God, strengthen me, comfort me, stay for me, let that have a little beginning on this dear earth will live & grow immortally into a Diviner reality than the heart of man has conceived. I am well satisfied with Norah dear Friend. She is very affectionate loveable, prudent, & clever in all practical matters, well suited to Percy in tastes pursuits &c. Your own Annie 1 Torriano Gardens Camden Rd. London Dec 4. 1875. Though it is but a few days since I posted a letter my dearest friend. I must write to you again because I cannot help it, my heart is so full, so full of love & sorrow and struggle. The day before yesterday I saw Mr Conway's printed account of you & instead of the cheerful report I had been told of, he speaks of your having given up hope of recovery. Those words were like a sharp knife plunged into me They choked me with bitter tears. Dont give up that hope, for the sake of those that so tenderly passionately love you - would give their lives with 1543 with joy forgon. Why who knows better than you, how much hope & the will have to do with it & I know quite well that the belief does not depress you - that you are ready to accept either lot with calmness, cheerfulness, perfect faith, perhaps with equal joy. But for all that, it does you harm. Ideas always have a tendency to accomplish themselves. And what right have the Doctors to utter gloomy prophecies? The wisest of them know the best how profoundly in the dark they are as to much that goes on within us, especially in maladies like yours. O cling to life with a resolute hold my beloved to bless us with your presence unspeakably dear beneficent presence - me to taste of it before so very long won. thirsting pining costing me. Take [out] through these poor words of mine some breath of the tender tender ineffable love that fills my heart and soul and body take of it to strengthen the very springs of your life. it is capable of that. O its cherishing warmth and joy, if it could only get to you. only fold you round close enough [*1546]This little town (of 11000 inhabitants all miners, smelters, &c., lies upon among the hill 1100 ft. above the sea. glorious hills here spreading there converging, with wooded flanks & swift brooklets leaping over stones in the hollows. The air too of course deliciously liquid & pure. - I have heard through a friend of ours of Bee's fellow students who lives in Camden (Mr Sirenkrop I think his name is, that we shall Blaenavon Pontypool England. Mon: Jan. 18/76 My dearest Friend, Do not think me too wilful or head strong but I have taken our tickets & we shall sail Aug 30. for Philadelphia. I found if I did not come to a decision now, we could not well arrange it before next summer. And since we have to come to a decision 1547my mind has been quite at rest. Do not feel any anxiety or misgivings about us. I have a clear & strong conviction I am doing what is right & best for us all. - After a busy anxious time I am having a week or two, rest with Percy who I find fairly well in health & prospering in his business - indeed he bids fair to take a large private practice as an analyst here, & is already making income enough to marry on only there is to build the nest - & I think he will have actually 'built' it, for there seem no[ne] eligible houses & to furnish it - so that the wedding will not be till next spring or early summer. never the less with a definitive goal & a definite time & the way between not so very rugged though rather dull and lonely I think he will be pretty cheery. 1548 be able to get a very comfortable home with pleasant garden there for about £55 per an: I think I can manage that very well - so all I need is to hear of a comfortable lodging or boarding house, (the former preferred), where we can be, avoiding Hotel expense while we hunt for the house. I have arranged for my goods, to sail a week 1549later than we do, so as to give us time. Good bye for a short while my dearest Friend Anne Gilchrist Bee has obtained a very satisfactory [of] accounting to Womens Medical College in Philadelphia & introduction to the Head. &c.wanting a goodish number of copies of the new edition & it is important to understand we may have them straight from you - Rossetti is making a list of the friends & the number so that they may all come together - Perhaps dearest friend you may be having a great difficulty in "getting" the books out for want of funds. if so let me help a little - show your trust in [my] one and my love them generously. Your own loving Annie Mrs. Gilchrist Feb. 25 '76 ans. March 17 1 Torraino Gardens Camden Rd London Feb 25/76 My dearest Friend, I received the paper & enclosed slip Saturday week - filling me so full of emotion I could not write - for I am too bitterly impatient of mere words. Soon, very soon I come my Darling - I am not lingering but held yet a little while by the firm grip of conscience - this is the last spring we shall be assunder - O I passionately believe there are years in store for us 1530years of tranquil. tender happiness. me making your outward life serene & sweet - you making my inward life so rich - me learning growing, loving - me shedding benign influences round us out of our happiness and fulfilled life. Hold on but a little longer for me my Walt - I am straining every nerve to hasten the day - I have enough for us all - ways we both love best. Percy is battling along Doing as much as we could expect in the time. I think he will soon build the nest for his mate. I think he never in his heart believed I really, should go to America and so it comes as a great blow to him now. You must be very indulgent towards him for my sake dear Friend. I am glad we know about those rascally book agents - for many of us are 1551 sweet comfort for my Beloved's Soul and Body through life, through and after dear. Anne Gilchrist (up-side-down on page) from Mrs. Gilchrist March 11 '76 1 Torraine SV. March 11/76 I have had such joy this morning, my darling- Poems of yours given in the "Daily News" sublime Poems, one of them reaching dizzy heights, filling my soul with strong delight. These prefaced by a few words [blind] timid enough yet kindly in tone, & better than nothing... The days the weeks are slipping by My Beloved, bearing me swiftly surely to you - before the beauty of the year begins to fade we shall come. The young folks too and full of bright anticipation & eagerness now. I am thankful to you; And Per getting 1552on with I trust such near & definite prospect of his happiness that he will be able to pull along cheerfully towards it after we are gone in spite of loneliness. I expect Darling we must go to some little town or village ten or twenty miles short of Philadelphia till the tremendous influx of visitors to the centennial has eased, else we shall not be able to find a corner there - Bye the bye I feel a little sulky at your always taking a fling at the poor piano. I see I have got to try & show you it too is capable of making deep chords in the human soul when it is the vehicle of a great maestro's thought & emotions - if only my poor fingers prove equal to the task! all my heart shall go into them - Take from my picture [de] a long lazy look of tender love and joy and faith deathless ever young, ever growing, ever learning aspiring love, tender cherishing domestic love. [is] Oh may I be full of 1553 in & love her in & through them They [will] teach me to look beneath the surface & to get hint's of the great future that is shaping itself out of the crude present & I believe we shall prove to be of the right sort to plant down them. - O to talk it all [ov] over with you dearest Friend here in London first [it] I feel as if that would really be - the joy the comfort of that. I cannot finish this to day but send what I have written without delay that you may know of the safe arrival of the books. With [?] reverent grateful love from us all Anne Gilchrist 1 Torriano Gardens Camden Rd London March 30/76 Yesterday 'was' a day for me dearest Friend! In the morning your letter, strong cheerful reassuring [letter] - dear letter. In In the afternoon the books, I dont know how to settle down my thoughts calmly enough to write, nor how to lay down the books (with delicate yet [?] serviceable exterior with, inscription making me so proud so joyous) But there are a few things I want to say to you ab 1554 once in regard to our coming to America. I will not act without "further advice from you"; but as to not resolving on it dear Friend I can't exactly obey that for it has been my settled steady purpose (resting on a deep strong faith) ever since 1869. Nor do I feel discouraged or surprised at what you say of American "crudeness," &c of which, in truth, one hears not a little in England. I have not shut my eyes to the difficulties and trials & responsibilities / for the children's sake / of the enterprise. I am not urged on by any discontent with old England or by any adverse circumstances here which I might hope to better there. My reasons, emotions, the sources of my strength and courage for the uprooting & transplanting, all are enclosed in those two volumes that lie before me on the table. That America has brought them forth makes me want to plant some, at least, of my children on her soil. I understand & believe in [1555]ones. But, indeed, even so far as this latter is concerned, there is no sacrifice required for any. It is by far the best step, for instance, I could take on Beatrice's account. She is heartily in earnest in her medical studies - I am persuaded too it is a splendid training for her whether or no she ever makes a money earning profession of it. And in England women have at present, no means of obtaining a complete 1 Torriano Gardens London. Camden Rd. Apr 21, 1876 My dearest Friend, I must write again, out of a full heart. For the reading of this book "The Two Rivulets" has filled it very full. Ever the deep inward assent, rising up strong, exultant, my immortal self recognizing, responding to your immortal self. Ever the sense of dearness 1556the sweet subtle perfume, pervading every page, every line to my sense. O I cannot put into any words what I perceive nor what answering emotion pervades me, flows out towards you - sweetest deepest greatest experience of my life - what I was made for - surely I was made as the soil in which the precious seed of your thoughts & emotions should be planted - they to fulfill themselves in me, that I might by & bye blossom into beauty & bring forth with fruits - immortal fruits - So no doubt other women feel and future women will. Do not dissuade me from coming this autumn my dearest Friend - I have waited patiently 7 years - patiently yet often, especially since your illness with such painful yearning your heart would yearn towards me if you realized it - I cannot wait any longer. Nor ought I to - that would indeed be sacrificing the prudence that concerns itself with immortal things to the prudence that concerns itself only with temporary 1557We must not come I think till the end of October because of its being so full. Perhaps indeed dearest Friend (but I dare not build on it) we shall talk this over in England. If you are able to take the journey, it might and would be sure to do you good as well as to rejoice the hearts of English friends. But if not, if we are not able to talk over our coming, do not feel the least anxious about us. We shall light on our feet & do very well. Percy seems getting on fairly well considering what a bad time it is in his medical education. They cannot get admission to any Hospital for the clinical part of the course. So that she is exceedingly anxious to come where it is possible for her to follow out her aims effectually. Then, I am confident she will find America congenial to her - that she is in her essential nature democratic - & that she has the intelligence, the sympathies, earnestness, affectionateness, unconventionality needed to pierce through appearances surface "crudeness," & see & love the great reality unfolding 1558below. So I believe has Herby. Then an artist is as free as an author to work where he please & reaps as much from fresh air widened experiences. He does not contemplate cutting himself off from England. will exhibit here - very likely take a studio in London for a season, a couple of years hence to work among old friends & associations, & so have double chance & opportunities. Then above all dearest friend they too see [I belie] America in & through you. They too would fain be near you. Have no anxiety or misgivings for us. Let us come & be near you - & see if we are made of the right sort of stuff for transplanting to American soil. only advise us where. If it be Philadelphia | which as far as offering facilities for Beatrice would, as far as I can learn, suit us very well 1559line of business. I think he will be able to marry [next] this autumn or following winter - I shall go and spend a month with him in July. Perhaps indeed if as many are prophesying [?] the iron trade does not recover its old pre-eminence here - he may be glad by & bye that I have gone over to America & opened a way for him. But if he does not follow me then, if I live, I hope to spend a few months with him every three or four 1560years, instead of as now a few weeks once a year. Anyhow we have to live widely apart. Thanks for the papers just received. Specially welcome the account of some stranger's interview with you - for me too before very long now the joy of hearing the "strong musical voice" read the Wound Dresser or speak. I have happy thoughts for my companions all day long, helping me over every difficulty, strengthening me. Good bye dearest Friend. Love from us all. A. GilchristIf I do not hear from you to the contrary I aim to take our passage by one of the "States" Line of Steamers that come straight to Philadelphia sailing about the 1st Sept - & I am told one ought to secure our cabin a couple of months or so beforehand But if there be indeed an increasing hope of your coming here in the course of the summer or if you think it would be best for us to go to New York (only I want to so at once we are likeliest to stop. because of my 1 Torriano Gardens London. Camden Rd. May 18. 1876 Just a line of birthday greeting my dearest Friend. May it find you enjoying the beautiful spring-time & the grand sights of people & products & the music at Philadelphia notwithstanding drawbacks (but lessening drawbacks I earnestly hope) of health, lameness &c. Rejoice, too, perhaps with the sight of many dear old friends whom 1561occasion has brought to your city. may all that will do you good come my dearest Friend - and not least the sense of relief & joy in having fulfilled the great task, in the teeth of such difficulties re-launched safely more fully, richly equipt the ship to sail down the great ocean of Time, bearing precious freight of seed to be planted in countless succession of human [hearts] souls; helping forward more than even the best lovers of your poems dream the great future of humanity - That is what I believe as surely as I believe in my own existence. The "low star" - the great star drooping low in the west has been unusually resplendent of @ night here lately. & by day lilacs & laburnums wonderfully brighten[ing] dear old smokey London, constant reminder all, if I needed any, of the Poet & the Poems so dear to me. 1562 furniture) let me hear as soon as maybe dear Friend. Looking at it purely as concerns the young ones, for some reasons it is very desirable [?] to come this year & for others to wait till next. With Bee for instance we are both losing time & wasting money by going over another winter here when there is no complete & satisfactory medical course to be had. Then as regards dear Per he writes me word that though he is doing fairly well he does not 1563think he will be able to take a house & marry till next summer - & that I am very sorry for. But then I think that as I could not be within him nor help him forward the balance goes down on Beatrice's side, if I am able to accomplish it - Good bye my dearest Friend - Loving tender thoughts shall I see you on the 30th. Solemn thoughts out leaping life, immortal aspirations of my Soul toward your soul. The children love too welcome Dearest Friend. Anne Gilchrist splendid capacity for the post - a noble looking old man (uncle of those Miss' Chases you met at our house - I can't settle to anything or think of any thing since I received Per's letter but the baby and Norah - Love to you & to Mrs. Whitman & Hattie & Jessie. Good bye dear Friend Anne Gilchrist Send me a letter soon. '77 Round Hill, Northampton Mass: Monday Sept Dearest Friend I have had joyful news to day: Percy's wife has a fine little boy - it was born on the 10th and Norah got through well & is doing nicely - as I feel very happy - Since then Per has gone to Paris where he is to read a paper before the "Iron and Steel Institute " on the Elimination of phosphorus from Iron" - which is also a little triumph of another kind for him - for the Council which accepted his paper is comprised of eminent English Scientists & eminent foreign ones will hear it: - I need not tell 1564you it is indescribably lovely here now - no[w] doubt [New Jers] Kirkwood is in the same - - the light so brilliant and yet soft. The rich autumn tints just beginning to appear. - the temperature delicious - crisp & bracing yet genial - The throng of people [are] is gone - but [now] a few of the pleasantest of the old lot remain - & a few interesting new ones have come among them Mrs. Dexter from Boston, who was a Miss. Ticknor / daughter and author of the book on Spanish literature - she and her husband full of interesting talk - also Mr. Martin [Brenines?] & his wife - a fine specimen of a leading Bostonian - Besides [?] also a physician from Florida whom I much admire - with a beautiful fine tenor voice - very handsome & graceful too a true southerner I should say - (but of Scotch extraction) Next we go to Boston - I went over the Lunatic Asylum here the other day & saw some figures crouched down in attitudes of such profound dejection I shall never for get them - some very bright & talkative - It is said it be the best managed in America - Dr Earle who is at the head is a man of 1565neighbors of another sort up at the "Center" Mr. Chadwick &c from New York, with whom I have pleasant chats daily when I trudge up to fetch my letters - Now & then I get a delightful drive or go on a blackberrying party with the folks round - I expect Giddy over to day & we shall remain here together for about another fortnight - then back to Round Hill - where I am to meet the Miss Chase whom you may remember taking tea with & liking - then on to Boston to see dear Bee & then to New York - where we shall meet again at last I hope ere long. Love to Mr. & Mrs. Whitman - I enjoyed her letter. Also to Hattie & Jessie - who will hear from me by & bye. With love to you dear Friend. Good bye. A Gilchrist Chesterfield, Mass Sept. 3' - /75 I am half afraid Herby has got to a malarious place by his description My Dearest Friend - I had a lingering hope - till Herby went south again - [pat] I should have a letter from you, in answer to mine, saying you were coming on up to see us here - In truth it was a great disappointment to me his going back to Philadelphia instead of your joining us, or him, either here or somewhere near to New York I wonder where that North Amboyna is that you once mentioned to me - and what kind of a place it is. - I have had a long quiet time here, and have enjoyed it very much - never did I breathe such sweet light pure air as is always blowing freely over these rocky hills - Rocky 1566as they are—and their sides or ravines are strewn with huge boulders of every conceivable size & shape - they nourish an abundant growth of woods and I fancy the farmers here do a great deal better with their winter crops of lumber and bark and maple sugar than with their summer one of grain & corn. - I expect Herby has described our neighbours to you—specially Levi Bryant the father of my hostess - a farmer who lives just opposite and has put such heart & soul and muscle & sinew into his farming that he has contrived to win quite a handsome competence from this barren soil! - it isn't muscle & industry only that are wanted here - but pluck and endurance - hauling his timber up & down over & through the drifts of snow along roads that are pretty nearly vertical - I am never tired of hearing his stories (nor he of telling [of] them) of hairbreadth escapes for him & his cattle, when the harness or the shafts have broken under the tremendous strain & nothing but coolness & daring have got him or them out of it alive - generally as he sits talking, his little boy of eleven who bids fair to be like him & can now manage a team or a yoke of oxen as well as any man in the parish - and work almost as hard - sits close by him leaning his head on his father shoulder or breast, - got the rugged old fellow has a vein of great gentleness and affectionateness in him & I notice the child nestles up to him all the same a very kind amiable good mother. - Then [there] are 1567a friendly pleasant manner. A long letter from my sister in England tells me Per looks [?] well and happy and is so proud of his little boy - and that Norah is really a perfect wife to him - affectionate, devoted, and the best of housewives. [H] How glad I am Herby is painting you - I wonder if you like the landscape he is working on as well as you did "Timber Creek". Miss Hillard has undertaken the charge of a young lady's education and is very much pleased with her task - She is in a delightful family who make her quite one with them - live in the best part of New York and pay her a handsome salary - She has the afternoons and Saturday & Sunday to herself - Concord boasts of having been first to recognize your [?] genius Mr Alcott & Mr. Sanborn say so. Good bye Dear Friend. A.G. friendly remembrance to Mr. & Mrs Whitman. Giddy joins in love to you: Concord. Mass: Oct. 25th. My Dearest Friend The days are slipping away so pleasantly here that weeks are gone before I know it. The Concord folk are as friendly as they are intellectual and there is really no end to the kindness we receive. We are rowed on the beautiful river everyday that it is warm enough. a very winding river not much broader than your favorite creek - flowing some times through [rocky] level meadows sometimes round rocky promontories & steep[ed] wooded [*1568*]hills which with their wonderful autumn tints are like a sage flower border mirrored in the water. never in my life have I enjoyed outdoor pleasures more - I hardly think, so much - enchanted as they are by the companionship of very lovable men and women. They lead an easy going life here - seem to spend half their time floating about on the river - and meeting in the evening to talk & read aloud - Judge Hoar says it is a good place to live and die in, but a very bad place to make a living in - Beatrice spent one Sunday with us here - We walked to Hawthorns old house in the morning & in the afternoon to the "Old Manse" and to Sleepy Hollow most beautiful of last resting places - Tuesday we go on to Boston for a week - very loth to leave Concord - at least I am - but Giddy begins to long for city life again and then to New York about the [?] 5th. Nov - Herby told you no doubt that I spent an hour or two with Emerson - and that he looked very beautiful - and talked in 1569 on him by & by - I wonder if you are as satisfied with his portrait of you as with the landscape. I suppose he is gone on to New York today. I have sighed for dear little Concord many times since I came away - beautiful city as Boston is & many the interesting & kindly people I am seeing here: but the out door life & the entirely simple unpretending cordial friendly ways of Concord & its inhabitants--won my heart altogether - one of them came to see me today & to ask me to go and spend a couple of days with them there again before we leave & I could not say nay though our time is short - there are some portraits in the art I have had no English papers late[l]y 39 Somerset St. Boston Nov 13 [78] My dearest Friend I feel as if I didn't a bit deserve the glorious budget you sent me yesterday for I have been a laggard, dull correspondent of late because leading such an unsettled kind of life I don't seem to have got well hold of myself. Beautiful is the little prose poem - the glimpse of the autumn cornfield; one smells the dewy fragrance, basks in the sunshine with you. tastes all the varied subtle out door pleasures, just as you want us to. (A lady who has just been calling on me - Miss Hillard - no relation ofof the odious Dr H. said "have You seen a lovely little bit about a Cornfield by Walt Whitman in a New York paper?" - She did not know your poems but was so taken with this - By the bye I am not quite American enough yet to enjoy the sound of the locusts - & big grass hoppers - ours are modest little things that only make a gentle sort of whirr - not that loud brassy sound - could we help wishing for more birds & less insects when I was at Chesterfield - And I like our English name "ladybird" better than "ladybug." Do your children always say when they see one, as ours do, "ladybird, ladybird fly away home your house is on fire. Your children are flown! But for the rest - I believe I am growing a very good American indeed - certain am I there is no more lovable people to live amongst any where in the world - And in this respect it has been good to give up having a home of my own here for awhile. For I have been thrown amongst many more intimately than could have been otherwise - What you say of Herby's picture delights me dear Friend I have been grieving he was not with us, sharing the pleasant times we have had, and enlarging his circle of friends - but after all he could not have been doing better - he must come 1571 museum here, which interested me a good deal - of Adams, Hancock, Quincy &c - & of some of the women of that time - they would form an excellent nucleus of a national portrait gallery which (together with good biographies while yet materials & recollections as fresh & abundant) would be a very interesting & important contribution to the worlds history - Tennyson's letter is a pleasure to me to see - considering his age & the imperfection of his sight through life matters are better rather than worse with him than one could have expected - Since that was written a friend (Walter White[)] 1572tells me they the Tennysons have taken a house in Eaton Sq. London for the winter - And last not least - thanks for Mr. Burroughs beautiful letter - that young man is indeed, as he says like a bit out of your poems - Then are two or three fine young men boarding here & Giddy & I enjoy their society not a little - Love to your Brothers & Sister - I shall write soon as I am settled down in New York to her or Hattie - Love to Mrs Stafford - and most of all to you Goodbye dear friend . A. Gilchrist I will send T's letter in a day or twodo I think of our evening in Philadelphia last winter - I shan't begin really to like New York till you come and we have had some chats together. I have had news from England which makes me rather anxious - Blaenavon Co: to where Per is chemist has gone into liquidation & I dont know whether it will continue to exist - or how soon in these dull times he may find a good opening elsewhere. Should things go badly for him 112 Madison Ave New York Jan 5/79 My dearest Friend Herby has told you of our difficulties in getting comfortable quarters here - and also that we seem now to have succeeded - not indeed in the way I most wished, & hoped we had in 19th St. taking rooms & boarding ourselves - so that we could have a friend with us when & as we pleased - It seems as if that were not practicable unless we were to furnish for 1573 ourselves. certainly our experiences there of using another's kitchen were discouraging - it was so dirty & uncomfortable that we were glad to take refuge in a regular boarding house again before our week was out. It seems to me more difficult to get anything of a 'medium' kind in New York than elsewhere I have been - if it isn't the best it is very uninviting indeed. Herby is enjoying his work and companionship at the League very much - We stand the cold [very] well -how does it suit you? Is your arm free from rheumatic pains - When you come to Mr Johnsons which will be very soon I hope, we shall be quite hardy and have a pretty sunny room - a sitting room by day - with a handsome piece of furniture which is metamorphed into a bed at night - and a large dressing closet with hot & cold water adjoining - all very comfortable O how wistfully 1574Herby & Giddy have been to hear Mr. Frothingham this morning & were much interested. Bee missed us sorely at first - but writes - when she does write which is but seldom. pretty cheerily. Friendly remembrance to you brother & sister. I wonder where Hattie & Jessie are spending their holidays Love from us all. Goodbye dear Friend A. Gilchrist Had a letter from Mr. Marvin - all well - he is doing the Washington letter of a N. Eng. paper. hopes & trust you are really going to Washington either Giddy and I will return to England to share homes with him there, or else. I want him to take into serous consideration coming out here, instead of our going back - of course it would be an anxious thing for him to do with wife & child, in these times, unless some definite opening presented itself. but I cannot help thinking that being an expert in his profession - with first rate training an experience and Iron work & metallurgy promising here to have 1575such enormous developments [here], he would be sure to do well in the end and meanwhile we could rub on together somehow - However we shall see - I have laid the matter before him. he & his dear little wife wrote me a very brave cheery letter when they told me the bad news - & I shall have an answer to mine I suppose by the end of the month - Kate Hillard read an amusing paper on Swinburne about a meeting of the Woman's Club in Brooklyn - & we had some fine music too - For the rest, I have not yet presented any introduction here. Have had some beautiful glimpses of the North & East River effects of the shipping at sunset, &c - Have subscribed to the mercantile library, - & am beginning to feel at home. 1576made some enquiries for me as to what Pers chances as a[?] scientific metallurgist would be in this country - & I am sorry to say he thinks it would be very poor indeed - Prof Lesley said the same thing. so it is clear I must not urge him to try the experiment seeing he has a wife & child - Herby & Giddy, both well Love from us all - Goodbye Dear Friend - A Gilchrist Friendly greeting to your bother & sister 112 Madison Ave - [14 Jan 79] Dearest Friend The pleasantest event since I last wrote has been a visit from Mr. Eldridge: We had a long friendly chat that did me good. Saturday evening we went to one of Miss Booths receptions - met Joaquin Miller there who is just back from Europe - of course we talked of you - Mrs. Moulton too is hoping so you will come to 1557New York during her stay here, which is to last a week or two longer. John Burroughs has just sent me a post card today he has returnd from a 3 weeks stay with his father in Delaware Co: - that he hopes to come here soon - wants Mr. Burroughs to come too & board for a month or so. Wants also "Walt to come - & lecture - but "Walt will not be hurried." Did I tell you that we found boarding here a young man Mr. Arthur Holland one of the family who were so very friendly to me & made my stay so pleasant both in Concord & Cambridge. He often comes to our room of an evening for an hour or two chat. & by the bye. being concerned with the iron trade he has been able to 1578outdoor life & the freedom from being "whistled" for at all hours of the day and night as she was there, a wonderful refreshment. That colored lady Mrs. Wiley whom you met once at our house, is her fellow labourer & room mate in the Dispensary. Bee likes her much. I am not sure whether you know Mr. Gilders? We spent a couple of hours delightfully with them yesterday afternoon - She has a very attractive face - a musical voice & such a sweet smile They are going to Europe for 112 Madison Ave Jan 27 /79 My dearest Friend, Are you near coming! I do long & long to see you - I am beginning to like New York better than I did and to have pleasant times. Had some friendly chats with Kate Hillard last week & went with her to call on Mrs Putnam Jacobi who has a little baby 3 weeks old & is still in her room, but has got through very nicely - She talks well doesn't she? & 1579has a face with plenty of individuality in it - Also we went together on Saturday again to one of Miss. Booths receptions & there met Mrs Croly & had the best talks about you I have had this long while. I Iike her cordiality. We are going to her reception on Sunday & to one at Mrs. Bigelow's Wednesday - It is true there is not much that can be called social engagement at the crowded receptions but they enable you to start many acquaintanceships some of which turn out lasting & good. We had some fine harp playing & a witty recital at Miss Booths. Miss Selous is back in America - I should not wonder if she comes on here soon. Bee is living at the Dispensary now instead of in the Hospital & finds the comparatively 1580a four months' holiday this spring. I admire the simple unconventional way in which they live. Herby is working away in the best spirits. He is going to paint that bowling alley subject on a large scale. Giddy is sitting by me with her nose in the French Dictionary working away at a novel of Balzac's. I have had scarcely any letters from England lately - and the papers bring none but 1581dismal tidings - nevertheless I don't believe our sun is going down yet awhile- we shall emerge from this dark crisis the better not the worse [for it] because compelled to grapple with the evils that have caused it instead of passively enduring them. Please give friendly remembrances from me to your brother & sister - Have you been at Kirkwood lately I wonder - I suppose Timber Creek is frozen over - Goodbye Dear Friend Write soon or better still, come. A. Gilchristbut 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 up 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. 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 sit a home busy with needle work, letter writing and reading. [?] After lunch we go out for a walk or to pay visits - end 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 [1584]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 has been living near him at Sheffield - an[d] American lady with two very fine little girls who has lately lost her husband in England and was on her way back to her parent's home in Pennsylvania - somewhere beyond Pittsburg She is one who loves your poems, & had 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 practice and Herby is so strongly advised by Mr. Eaton of whose judgement & 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 [1583]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 library 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 greeting from me to your brother & Sister 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-ward 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 rest 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 [1584]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 [Joh] 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 wa about 15 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 knew anything [1585]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 sailing 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 [1879] Glasgow June 20 Friday 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 sea sickness, but after that we really enjoyed the sea & the sky - it was mostly cloudy but such lovely light 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 Giants [1586]Causeway on the north coast of Ireland - great sort of natural ramparts & bastions of rocks wonderfully grand Then we sailed up Lough Fozle to land a group of Irish folks 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 & 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 trees un[der] [1587]& 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 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 weeks time & spend a month together there where he will be super intending some Works - meanwhile we are going to Edinburgh for a few days - I kept 1588thinking of you on the voyage dear friend & wondering how you would like it & whether you could stand being stowed away in this little box-like berth at night - I should recommend any American friend coming over to try this line - we had a fine ship fine - five officers & crew - & the latter part fine scenery. Love to your Brother & Sister - & to Mr. Burroughs - address to me for the present Care Percy C. Gilcrhist Blaenavon Poutypool Mon: Love from us all. I shall write soon again. Goodbye dear Friend A. Gilchrist.go to no one knows but as soon as the collieries re-open they will all reappear. We often meet colliers returning from work. They look as if they had just emerged frome 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 supper. 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 - 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 please write soon I am longing for letter Lower Shincliffe Durham August 2/79 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 [1589]lying among wooded hills corn fields, meadows and collieries, on the banks of the Wear, for the sake of being near Percy & his wife. He is superintending here the erection of some kilns for making the familiar 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 wooded hills - the interior is of wonderful grandeur & beauty. When you enter one of these cathedrals you are tempted to see architecture as a lost art with no 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 epically the coal & iron which chiefly concern this district, seem to cast a gloom over everything. There are whole rows of colliers' cottages in the village empty. Where they [*1590*]2 across the ferry & strolls up Chestnut St. - I hardly realized till I left it how dearly I love America. [The] 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 dress Bee for Berne - I miss her sorely had quite hoped we should have all been together at Paris this winter - but it seems the course is much longer & more arduous 1591there. 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 Bernick on Tweed, lies through the richest & best cultivated farm land in Britain- the sea - [lay] sparkling on one side of us & these fertile fields dotted with splendid flocks & herds with large comfortable looking farm houses & here & there an old castle; it was singularly enjoyable - How I have wished every where 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. [As] It is the 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. Goodby dear freind A. Gilchrist.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 - [the most] 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 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 map - a most precious possession to me which I want not part with for to whole world) [the] all our journeyings - both in South & 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 tell me in what way your health has failed - whether it is the rheumatic & neuralgic affliction that troubled you the last spring we were in Philadelphia, or whether the fatigues & excitements & 1592the very engagements & full life, & burst of prophetic joy as it were had proven 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] theatre, the free unfettered conditions where humanity will enact a new drama, with the parts all so differently cast! The [other part] best, 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 [the] splendid conditions you must give it a century or two instead of 50 years - before at last 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 1593stride forward. won two important law suits at Berlin, where the Bessemer wing & 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 to winter Love from us all Goodbye Anne Gilchrist 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 [is] the pleasantist & 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 1594of green & fertile Middlesex - has moreover pleasant lanes solid old homes shady by big elms & other [pleasant] picturesque features & such an abundance of clean 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 needle work, an avalanche of letters, the care of my dear little man, - the re-editing of my husbands life of Blake, to which there will be a considerable addition of [over] letters newly come to light, I hardly know which way to turn. Per & my nephew & the "Process" have made a great [1595]in his ways every day - rapid indeed is the opening of the little bud at that age - between 1 & 3. & the way he has of looking up & giving you little kisses quite of his own accord would win anybody's heart. Bee's letters continue as cheering as ever - she is heartily enjoying work & life, and accomplishing the purpose she has set her heart upon - & the peoples she is with are so good & kindly, it is quite a home. She is working' a good deal with the microscope. Her out door recreation is skating. Herby is getting on very nicely - He has had a commission to make some designs for a new line of Please give my love to John Burroughs when you write or see him 5 Mount Vernon Hampstead Jan 25/80 My dearest Friend Welcome was your post card announcing recovered health & return to Camden! May this find you safe there [& with] 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! [1596]What tears & what evenings we would have - you would certainly have to say "there is a point beyond which" & would have pretty late trips back by moonlight. Strange episode in my life! so unlike what went before & what comes after, - those [days] 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 so 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 mean while dear Friend my work is 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 did not know how to part with him & grew more & more engaging & pretty [1589]Send me a line soon dear Friend. I think of you continually & know that I 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. [*1602*] 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 Conway's last Sunday & found him one of the pleasantest of talkers. Rossetti, & all your friends whom I know are well. please give my love to your brother & Sister - Were Jessie & Hattie at home in St. Louis I wonder when you were there. Love from us all Goodbye dearest Friend. A Gilchrist painted tapestry - and in figures "Andy & 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 on 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 we asked for - but no hurry. [No] Edward Carpenter came up from Sheffield and [*1598*]spent an evening with him 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 Discoveries in Science. Carpenter knows intimately & goes freely among a greater range & variant of men than any Englishman I know - he has [the k] a way of making himself thoroughly welcome by the fireside of mechanics & factory workers - his own kith & kin are aristocratic. - Giddy is taking singing lessons again, & hopes by the time ou next see her to be able to contribute her share with the evenings pleasure. Percyis 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. Gilder is the better for rest & they seem to enjoy England but England has done 1599to hear has decided to continue her [st] 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 loveable & admirable We do not forget the Staffords nor they us. Most often sends Herby a magazine as on token. Love to them when you see them & to Mr. & Mrs. Whitman & Hattie & Jessie & kindest remembrance to Dr. Bucke Marley, Haslemere England Aug 22 /80 My dearest Friend I have had all the welcome papers with accounts of your doings; and today 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 Canada for the winter quite set up in body as well as full of delightful memories If only we were at [No] 22d 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. [But] And I am not yet quite 1600re-acclimatized; & what with missing the sunshine & working a little too hard was feeling quite knocked up: so Bee insisted on my coming down [here] 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 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 Brown 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, as 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 there. & which is a lovely as it can be - & to spend two years at the 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 1601again afterwards. I hope you received the little memoir of my husband all right, - Herby is very busy with a drawing of you - hopes that with the many sketches he made, & the vivid impress on his memory & the help of photographs that it will be [a] good I wish he had possessed as much power with the brush when he was in America in as he has now - he is making very great progress in mastering of the technique Keats Corner Welt Rd. Hampstead Apr 18/81. My dearest Friend I have just been sauntering in our little bit of sunny garden which slopes to the south - surveying with much satisfaction some fruit trees - plum, green gage, pear, cherry, apple which we have just had planted to train up against the house and fence, in which fashion fruit ripens much better with our English modicum of sunshine; besides taking no room & casting no shade over our little circle bit of ground: there we have filled our large window with flowers in pots which makes the room smell as delicious as a garden - Giddy is assiduous in keeping 1603them well watered & tended. - Welcome was your postcard - with the little rain birds coy note in it. But I had not before heard of your illness dear friend - the letter before you spoke of being unusually well, as I trust you are again now, & enjoying the Spring. I am well again so far as digestion &c goes but bronchitis & asthma of a chronic kind still trouble me - my breath is so short, I cannot walk which is a privation. I am going at the beginning of June, to stay with Bee in Edinburgh, as she will not have any holiday or be able to come & see us this year, & much am I longing to be with her - Have you begun to have any summer thoughts dear Walt? and do they turn towards old England, & our nest therein? - Yes I have received & enjoyed all the papers & cuttings - dearly like what you said of Carlyle. Every one here is speaking bitterly of him just now because of the harsh judgments & sarcastic descriptions of people in the "reminiscences" - But I know that at bottoms his heart was genial & good & that he wrote those in a miserable mood - I never looked at them 1604it) plenty of merry go-rounds - & enjoyment of the pure air & sun [sh] shine & sweet sights, more than they know - The light is failing dearest friend so with love from us all - good bye Anne Gilchrist Friendliest greetings to your brother & Sister & to Hattie & Jesse when you write to the Staffords. I observe too that he reads & dwells upon your poems - especially the "Walt Whitman," with growing frequency & delight. We often say "won't Walt like sitting in that sunny window" - or "by that cheery open fire" or "sauntering on the heath" & picture you here in a thousand different ways. I believe Maggie Sealey is coming from Paris where she is studying art in good earnest, at the beginning of May, & then will come & spend a few days with us - Welcome are American friends! 1605The Buxton Forman's took tea with us last week - & we had pleasant talk of you. & of Dr. Bucke Mrs Forman is a sincere [af] sympathetic, motherly woman whom you would like. the Rossetti's too have been to see us - we didnt not think William is in the best health or spirits - & his wife was not looking well either, but then another baby is just coming. This Easter time the poorest of the London working folk flock in enormous numbers to Hampstead Heath; it is a sight that would interest you - they are rougher & noisier & poorer than such folks in America is - & the men more prone to get the worse for drink - but there is a good deal of fun & merriment too - the girls & boys racing about on donkeys (who have a pretty hard time of 1606Please give my love to your sister and tell her that her good letter spoke the right words to me & that I shall write before very long. Thanks for the paper dear friend - & for those that came when I was too overwhelmed - but which I have since read with deep interest - those about your visit to your birthplace. With love from us all - good bye dearest Friend A. Gilchrist. 12 Well Road, Hampstead London Dec 14/81 My Dearest Friend Your welcome letter to hand. I have longed for a word from you - could not write myself - was stricken dumb - nay, There is nothing but silence for me still - Herby wrote to Mr Stafford first - thinking that so the shock would come less abruptly to you - I heard of you at Concord in a kind long letter from Fredrick Holland with whose wife you had some conversation - Indeed all that sympathy and warm & true words of love & sorrow & highest [apprec] admiration & esteem for my darling, could 1607& to comfort me I have had - and most & best from America. And [among] many of her poor patients at Edinburgh went sobbing from the door when they heard they should see her no more - The report of your health is comforting dear friend - Mine too is better - I am able to take walks again - though still liable to sudden attacks of difficult breathing. Herby is working hard - has just been disappointed over a competition design which he sent in to the Royal Academy - a very poor & specious work obtaining the premium - but is no way discouraged & has no need to be for he is making great progress - works hard, loves his work & is of the stuff whereof great painters are made, I am persuaded - so he can afford to wait - Giddy is not quite so well & strong as I could wish - but there seems nothing serious - She is working diligently at the development of her voice - & is learning German - Dr. Bucke's friend Mr. Baxton Forman & his wife are very warm staunch friends of Herby's 1698[the loved] the Swiss ladies with whom she made her home while in Bern? A more tender & beautiful love and sorrow than that with which they cherish the memory of her never grew in my 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 and brother. How are Mr Marvin & Mr. Burroughs? Best love from us all Goodbye dear Friend Anne Gilcrhist 12 Well Road. Jan 29/82 Feb 6th. My dearest Friend, Your letter to Herby was a real talk with you. I dont know why I punish myself by writing to you so seldom now for indeed to be near you, even in that way would do me good; often & often do I wish we were back in America near you. As I write this I am sitting to Herby for my portrait again - he has never satisfied himself yet : but this one seems coming on nicely - and so is the Consuelo picture. Another one he has in his mind is to be called "The tea-party" and it is to 1609 be the old group round our table in Philadelphia - you & me and dear Bee & Giddy & himself. He thinks that what with memory & photographs & the studies he made when with you he will be able to put you & my darling on the canvas. 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 out strives the hares. Percy and Norah are spending the winter in London (at Kensington) - 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 letters she once wrote you, how much she loved 1610 Herby is well & 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 [has] a sky [large] 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 greeting to yr. brother & sister & Hatty & Jesse Do you ever see Mr. Marvin If so give our love & we hope to see him here one day. 12 Well Road Hampstead May[h] [1]8th/82 My dearest Friend Herby went to David Bognes about a week ago; he him self 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 husbands first literary venture & behaved honorably. 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 1611in 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 chronolgical arrangement if change at all then 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 some times 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 had 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 [of] my dear Gabriel would not have been himself". Edward Carpenter's father too is gone; but he at a ripe age without disease went 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? 1612it will make a lovely back-ground 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 or 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 Bognes' bankruptcy? Did I tell you that among our friends one of your warmest admirers is Henry Holmes, the great violinist (equal Joachim some think - we among them). Per & wife & little grandson all well. My love to brother & sister & to Hattie Jessie - Goodbye dear Walt. I hope to write more & better soon Anne Gilchrist. Greetings to the Stafford. Keats Corner Well Rd. Hampstead London Nov 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 some thing in it that takes hold of me - & that seems to be a kind of natural background or substratum [of] 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 favorites are the portrait 1623take about 30 (without cost 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 [with] & had such happy hours with. 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 for 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 [all] my mothers sister are, to be fine, lovable samples of American women - in whom, I mean, I detect like the distinctive aroma of a flower, something special: that is [am] 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. It is summer work was down in Warwickshire making sketches - & very charming ones they are of George Eliots native scenes - - one of a garden-nook - up steep old worn stone steps bordered with flowers that is enticing - 1614- I see you, too, are having floods. With [it] 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 [for h] 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 over-head 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 dear friend. A. G. Hearty remembrances to your brother & sister & Hattie & Jesse - 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 [y] with you & your other [it] self - your Poems: & with struggles to say a few words that I think want saying about them; that might help some to their birthright [in ?] who now stand off either ignorant [of] or misapprehending. We all go on much 1516Feb 13. as usual. - I wonder if you will like a true story of Lady Dilke that I heard the other day - I do. [She] It was before her marriage She was a handsome young heiress, a daring horsewoman fond of hunting. There was a man, wealthy & of good position who had behaved very basely & cruelly to a young girl in her neighborhood. & 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 horse whip you." He looked at her with affrontery & made a mocking bow "But, she continued, "since they wont, I will." & she cut him across the face with her riding whip; upon which he turned & rode off the field like a dog with his tail between his legs, & reappeared in that neighborhood 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 1616They 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 mens eyes. - I hear the "Somerset 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 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 world of garden which runs down toward the south is fragrant with hyacinths and wall-flowers ([gre] beautiful tawny reddish yellow fellows laden with rich perfume - and at the bottom is a big old Cherry tree one nears of snowy blossom, [beyond] in a neighbours gay garden 1617& 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 door 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 their 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 [st] 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 - 1618who, by the bye narrowly escaped a bad accident just at our door - the horse broke & the cab came down on his horse & frightened him so that he bolted struck the cab against a lamp-post happily, else it would have been worse) over-turned then & it - but when they crawled out no worse harm was done than a few cuts from the glass - & Kath & 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 ladies of introduction from James the novelist - have had a very gay time indeed. [1883] Keats Corner Hampstead. Jul 30/. My dearest Friend Lazy me that have been thinking letters to you instead of writing them! We have Dr. Buckes 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 reminiscence 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 1619glimpse of a very beautiful friendship. - But why o why did Dr Bucke set himself to counteract that beneficent law of nature's by which the dust tends to lay itself? And carefully gathering together again all the rubbish stupid (I) 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! Then again, how do I hate all that unmeaning, irrelevant clatter about what [S] Rabelais or Shakespeare or the ancient's & 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 1620been quite lionized - and last not least Mr. Walton Door the Curator of the Pennsylvania Museum in Fairmont Park - whom we all liked much. He is enjoying his travel here with all his heart - is a great enthusiast for our old Gothic Cathedrals; indeed for every thing beautiful but says there is nothing such 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 sea side - Herby wants a back[ground] 1621[back]ground 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 Lyme Regis where I was thirty years 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 can able to stand it & enjoy it? I wonder where you are. Friendly greetings to Mr. & Mrs Whitman & Hattie & Jesse & the Staffords Love to you dear Friend from us all. Anne Gilchrist My little book on Mary Lamb is just out, will send a copy in a day or twocoast to the West [and] only about a couple of hundred miles & you come to such a different type - dark - black-bearded 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 [in] have a good practice & say they dont know what a day's illness 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 1622 also seeming to need a little bracing up we came down to this ancient [little] 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 off the Kentish Coast so near to France has innumerable old castles forts; moats, traces every where of centuries of warfare and of means of defence [from] against our great neighbour - It is a fine hilly, woody country too and very picturesque these grey massive ruins, many of them used now as farm houses, look. The men of Kent are very proud of their county and are reckoned a fine race - tall, muscular ruddy complexioned, and [one] often [sees] 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 1623it altogether meekly. I hope you received my little book safely - I should be a hypocrite if I pretended not to care whether your 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 & Hattie & Jesse? Send me a few words soon Goodbye Dearest Friend Anne Gilchrist means as 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 Womans 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 1624allowed 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, & find the advantage great. I expect his 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 as been [by] the sea sapphire - colour - the air brisk & elastic yet soft. Tomorrow Grace 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 as doubt - he did put so much gall in his ink sometimes, human native can't be expected to take 1625to run over to see you. He says he should like always to spend his winters in New York. Did I say how very highly I prize that last slip you sent me "A backward glance on very own road"? It both corroborates & explains much that I feel very deeply. If your 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 me know your where-abouts Remembrances & love Goodbye dear Walt Anne Gilchrist 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 towards America, and were [it] not I & mine bound here by unseverable ties, did we not seem to you & belong here 1626as by a kind of natural destiny that has to be fulfilled very cheerfully could I [pl] 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 [of] 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 grey cloth very useful - but one day 'same him an old suit". Your figure in the picture [of] is I think a fair suggestion of one aspect of you; but not, [of] 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 1627having with you the while Everything full of beauty just now here, as no doubt it is with you - Goodbye dearest friend Don't forget the letter that is to come soon Love from us all, Love & again love from Anne Gilchrist 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 Dawden. And I know not when I have set eyes on a more beautiful personality: I think you would be as much attracted toward him as I was. It was he who told me (full 1628 of enthusiasm) of the Poem in Harpers 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 &c. He is a tall man, complexion tanned & healthy, nose finely modelled, dark eyes with plenty of life & meaning in them. hair greyish - I should think he is 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 & 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 1629the "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 - Goodbye Dearest friend. love from all & most from Anne Gilchrist Keats Corner Aug 5. 84 Dearest Friend That notion 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 1630the 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. Pennell 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 1631having 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 harrassed 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 engages 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. Wolverhampton Oct 26. 84 Dear Walt I don't suppose the enclosed will give you nearly as much pleasure as it gives me. But Villiers Stan[d]ford is I [suppose] think the best composer England has produced since the days of Parcell & 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! 1632I have been staying with old friends who have a house you would enjoy - it stands all alone on the [sto] top of a heath clad hill with miles of coppice (young woods) below it, and spread out beyond is a rich valley with [mras] more wooded hills jutting out into it - and you see the storms a long way off traveling up from the sea and you can wander for miles & miles through the woods or over the breezy hill - [as] 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 1633I am deep in Froudes last volumes of "Carlyle's life in London" Folks are grumbling that they have heard enough & too much of Carlye & 'his' grumblings and sarcasm. But he is an inexhaustibly interesting figure to me & will remain so in the long run to the world I am persuaded. It grieves me that he should have been so cruelly unjust to himself as a husband - that remorse, those bitter self reproaches were undeserved were altogether morbid - he was not only an infinitely better husband than she was wife: he was wonderfully affectionate & tender & just - & as to his temper & irritable nerves she knew what Keats Corner Hampstead Dec 17. 84 Dearest Friend At last I have extracted a little bit of news about you from friend Carpenter who never comes to see us and is as reluctant to write letters as - somebody else that I know. That you have a comfortable elderly couple to keep house for you was a good hearing - for "the old shanty" had risen before my eyes as somewhat lonely & perhaps the 1634 cooking &c not well attended to. - There seems a curious kind of ebb and flow about the recognition of you in England. just now there [seem to be] are signs of the flow - of a steadily gathering great wave [as] one indication of which is the little pamphlet just published in Edinburgh - one of the "Round Table" Series - no doubt a copy has been sent you. If not and you would care to see it I will send you [one copy]. On the whole I like it (barring one or two stupidities) - at any rate as compared with what has hitherto been written. My poor article has so far been been rejected by Editors - so I have laid it by for a little to come with a fresh eye & see if I can make it in any way more likely to win a hearing. though I often say to myself if they have not ears to hear you, how is it likely one can unstop their ears? But on the other hand there is always the chance of leading some to [lat] read the Poems who had not else done so. - Percy & Norah and [little] Alick now grown a very sturdy active little fellow are coming to spend Xmas with us. Which is a great pleasure. 1635Hall music school who so reminds her of Hattie Love from us all dear Friend - Most from me Anne Gilchrist she was about when she married him. - Herby was walking through the British Museum the other day with a friend when a group, a ready made picture struck him - it was a young student sculptress, a graceful girl high on a pile of boxes [copying] modelling in clay a copy of an antique statue, & standing below looking up at her was a young sculptor in his blouse criticising her work with much animation & gesture; the background of the group, a part of the Elgin Marbles. So this 1636is what Herby is painting & I think he will make a very jolly little picture out of it - I have been much a prisoner to this house with bad colds ever since I returned from Wolverhampton, but am beginning to get out again - which puts new life into me. I have never envied anything in this world but a man's strong legs & powers of tramping, tramping over hill & dale as long as he pleases - legs would content me, & a sound breathing apparatus. I am in no hurry for wings. Giddy's voice too is just now eclipsed by cold. I hope you have escaped this evil and are able to jaunt to & fro on the ferries as freely as ever. And I hope the pleasant Quaker friends are well. and Mr & Mrs. Whitman and Hattie & Jesse - there is a fellow student of Giddy's at the Guild 1637& active to the last & now he is gone - & his elder brother died only two months before him. I cannot help grieving over public affairs too - never in my life time has old England been in such a bad way - no honest & capable man seemingly to take the helm - & what Carlyle was fond of describing as the attempt to guide the ship to the shouts of the bystanders on shore - the newspapers &c prospering very ill - A government that tries perpetualy how to do it and how not to do it at the same moment! The best comfort is that I do not Keats Corner Hampstead England Feb 27. 85 Dearest Friend How has the winter passed with you I wonder? me it has imprisoned very much with bronchial & asthmatic troubles - And the four walls of the house & the ceiling seem to close in upon one's spirit as well as one's body all too much. I hope you have been able to wend to & fro daily on the great ferry boats & enjoy the beautiful broad view & the sky & 1638the throngs of people as of old - you are in my thoughts as constantly as ever though I have been so silent - Percy & his wife & the little son spent some weeks with us at Christmas & now they have taken a house quite near into which they will be moving in a week or two. I cant tell you what a dear affectionate & reasonable, companionable [a] little fellow Archie is - now six years old - Perhaps you will have seen in the American papers that Sidney Thomas the Cousin with whom Percy was associated in the discovery of the Basic process is dead - he spent his strength too freely - wore himself out at 35 - a man he was much loved by all with whom he had to do. His mother & sister have been watching & hoping against hope & taking him to warm climates, he himself full of hope & the mind bright 1639I don't feel grumbly however - only shut in - Herby has been working hard at getting up an Exhibition here to help along our Public Library here. It is so very hard to stir up any thing like public spirit - & unity of action in London or its suburbs - I suppose because of its vastness - & alas also the social cliques & gentilities & snobbishnesses - Good bye Dearest Walt with love from all Anne Gilchrist thinks there is any, the smallest sign of deterioration in the English race - so we shall pull through somehow, after tremendous disasters - How many things should I like to sit and chat with you about, dear Walt: above all to see you again! I could not get my article into any of the magazines or reviews I most wished - I believe it is coming out in "To-Day." Giddy was so pleased, at your sending her a paper - a very capital article too it is of Miss Kellogg, - I was interested also in a little paragraph I found 1640 [*252*]about Pullman town near Chicago which confirmed my suspicion that it was not a thing with healthy roots - but only a benevolent despotism. I am seeing a good deal of some socialists just now - & I confess that though they mean well, I think they have less sense in their heads than any people I ever saw - I am going to pay a little visit to those friends (friendliest of friends) who live on the lonely top of a heath covered hill - with such an outlook! such wooded slopes & broad valleys - & the storm traveling up hours before they arrive - such sweeps of sunshine too! & they mean to drive me about till I am quite strong again - So the next letter I write dear Friend shall be more cheery. I am afraid to look back lest this one should read too grumbly to send 1641I think I described to you the little bit of actual life it depicts - a young girl he saw at the British Museum modelling a copy of an Antique statue & young sculptor in his blouse standing below & giving her some animated criticism - A little bit of the Elgin Marbles in the background - Herb has also a little picture he calls "Midsummer" - a bit of very old & masonry buttressed wall hung with roses in full Hampstead May 4. 85 My dearest Friend. Delays of Editors there is no end to them! I am promised now that the art: shall appear in the June no. & if it does I will send you at once the number of copies you name. And if it does not. I think I had best get it back & have done with the Editors of "To-Day" & try for some other & better opening again - I have been reading & re-reading & pondering over Froude's 9.. 1642vols of Carlyle - The Reminiscences Letters &c &c - and am pretty well at boiling point with indignation against Froude - boiling point of anger & freezing point of contempt. His betrayal at every point of a sacred trust! [not] lazy, slip shod editing! Not even taking the pains to put letters and their answers together - but printing the one in 1882 & the other three or four years after - so that half the meaning and all the 'mutuality' of the letters are lost! [And] then the sly malignity of the comments with which they are preceded! If I live I will do my utmost to expose all this & to show that Mrs. Carlyle was no injured heroine nor he a selfish & neglectful husband - Both had their faults but the balance of affection & tenderness was largely on his side, as well as of [all] other great qualities: though I like her too - I think she would have [Herby] scorned Fronde's ignoble championship. Herby has had rather better luck with his pictures this year. Has one - "The Sculptor's Lesson - " fairly well hung at the Royal Academy where it shines out very cheerfully & holds its own modestly, I may say without maternal vanity - 1643& good & everything adequate as care-taker. I am looking forward very much to the "After Songs" and "Letters of Parting" Does the sale of "Leaves of Grass" continue pretty steady? I look forward with a sort of dread to seeing my [little] article in proof lest I should feel very disappointed with it [& realize it is] Your loving Friend A Gilchrist - Do you ever see or hear from Mr Marvin? He is a favorite with all of us. Do you remember how we laughed at his dramatic presentation of a negro prayer meeting? bloom & Giddy figure standing above - at the Grosvenor. Now if he has the luck to sell too! He [has] has a commission also to paint a small portrait of me for our friends at Marley, on which he is busy just now. As soon as he has a little spare money in his pocket I think his first use of it will be a run across the Atlantic & a glimpse of you Dear Friend. Giddy is going to sing 1644at a Soiree of socialists & revolutionary folk in general on Wednesday. Her songs are to be "The Wearing O' the Green & "Poland Dirge" & the "Marseillaise" - you will think we are getting pretty red hot! But alas! though our sympathy with the Cause the course of suffering millions is warm our faith in the wisdom & ability of those who are aspiring to be their leaders, so far as we know anything of them - is infinitesimal. - What a burst of beauty - we have had during the last ten days! We look out just now on a sea of apple & pear blossoms from the deepest pinks to dazzling white - & the tenderest green intermingled with all - I hope you are able to be out nearly all day & enjoy all - and that home affairs go smoothly & comfortably & that Mrs Davis is attentive 1645because too I still cherished in my heart a hope that I should yet see you again - here in my own home - & now it seems next to an impossibility Right thankful am I to hear about Mrs. Davis - that she takes good care of you - please give her a friendly greeting from me. I am going to have rather a bothersome summer - first of all the hours full of workmen to make all clean & tidy & then my Scotch lassie friend & factotum rather than servant must have a holding & go to her friend in Scotland for a month. I shall heartily welcome your friend no need to say. & be sure to like her. Love from Grace & Herb & most of all from me I have plenty more to say but won't delay this Goodbye dear Walt Anne Gilchrist Hampstead London June 21. 85 My dearest Friend I hope the "To-Days" have come safe to hand. - I am thinking a great deal about the new Edition; and cannot help hoping you re going to revert to the plan of the Centennial Edition which issued your writings in two independant volumes. May I without being presumptuous. dear Walt. tell you how I should dearly like to see them arranged? I want "Crossing Brook" 1646Ferry" "Song at Sunset" Song of the Open Road, Starting from Paumanok, Carol of Words Carol of Occupations" & either as I sat by blue Ontario[n] shore" or the preface to edit:/ 55 put in to "Two Rivulets" - You could make room for them, that in volumes might balance in size by making them exchange places with the "Centennial Songs" and the memoranda during the War not that these are not precious to me but I want it dearest because I want in the Two Rivulets Volume [all] [t]hat will best prepare [the] reader lift him up to the true point of view and make him all your own before he comes to the inner sanctuary of Calamus & Walt Whitman & Children of Adam. Monday morn : your letter just to hand. It gives me deep joy, dear Friend. I have sent copies of To-Day to Dr. Bucke & John Burroughs but did not know of his change of address so fear it has miscarried. I will send another and also one to W. OConnor. - You did not tell me about your fall - unless indeed a letter has been lost - It fills me with concern because of the difficulty it [to] increases in getting that free out-door life that is so dear & essential to your soul & body, and [*[259]1647*]to know that there is over here a little band - perhaps indeed it is now quite a considerable one, for we had not yet had time to ascertain how considerable who would joyfully respond to that Poem of yours "To Rich Givers" - A friend & near neighbour of ours, - Frederick Wedmore, is coming over to America this [*1885*] [*[1886]*] 12 Well Rd. Hampstead England July 20. /85 My dearest Friend, A kind of anxiety has for some time past weighed upon me and upon others, I find, who love & admire you, that you do not have all the comfort you ought to have - that you are perhaps sometimes straitened for means. We 1648 [*[260]1648*]have had letters from several young men always or quite strangers to us asking questions on this subject - and we hoped & thought that if this were so you would permit those who have received such priceless gifts from you to put their gratitude into some tangible shape, some "free-will offering" - Hence the paragraph was put into the Athenaeum which I send with this and we were proceeding to organize our forces when your paper came to hand this morning. (the Camden Post July 3) which seems decisively to bid us desist! Or at all events wait till we had told you of our wishes and plan[s]. One thing would I feel sure give you pleasure in any case and that is 1649autumn and counts much on coming to see you -- he is a well-known writer on Art here -- a friendly candid open minded man with whom I think you will enjoy a talk I am on the lookout for Mrs Smith -- shall indeed enjoy a talk with a special friend of yours dear Walt -- I hope she will not fail to [*262*] [*1650*] come -- Liddy is away at [Hazleman?]. [H???y] just going to write for himself to you -- That is a very graphic little bit in the Post -- The portrait of Hugo, the Canary & the Kitten -- I like to know all that -- as well as to hear the talk. My love Dear Walt [?] Gilchrist