HARNED / WHITMAN Box 3 Folder 34 CORRESPONDENCE Gilchrist, Beatrice & Herbert H. Aug [?] 1878-Apr. 1883 (L.C. 136) much. To day Mrs Marvin drove over to fetch me to lunch, & I had a beautiful drive over to Rochester, in the afternoon a game of lawn -tennis - a stroll down to the creek & drive home J Forests Hill Cemetery & Jamaicica Pond. The air was fresh after a shower & [the] golden-tinted, & the drive through beautiful lanes & country. All were friendly & it was refreshing to emerge from the little hospital world. Mrs Marvin's cordial face greeted me when I was speaking to some patients, in hammocks, under the trees, the day he called, much to my surprise [*Aug. 7th*] New England Hospital - Colman Ave - Boston Highlands. Dear Walt, Hospital life is beginning to seem a long accustomed life. I enjoy all the duties involved & all the human relations. Even getting up in the night is compensated for by yielding a sense of importance & independence. I sleep in a large room with three windows & three beds in a row. Breakfast at 7 & we are supposed to have seen all our patients before breakfast, but do not keep to that rule. After breakfast round to count pulses & respirations, note condition, clean any wound discharge etc. [*1651*] 136 Six letters to Whitman, including two from Beatrice Gilchrist and four from Herbert H. Gilchrist, all ranging in date from Aug. (?) 1878, to Apr. 29, 1883.At 1/2 past 8 o'clock go the rounds with the resident physician (Dr Berlin) all the students & superintendent of [med] nurses. These put up medicine each for her own patients (about 8 in no.), give electricty etc. If one's patient has an ache or pain the nurse whistles for the student (my whistle is 2) she sees the patient orders what is necessary or if serious reports to Dr Berlin - When there is some microscopic work, & copying out the history & daily record of the case & making out the temperature charts more than fills in the day - At 8 o'c we all in conclave report about our patients & talk over any interesting case. One of my [cases] patients has empyema following pleurisy, I inject into her chest about [fzxij?] a day of different preparations. Several of my patients (I have all the very sick just now) require very careful watching. In the evening we go[u] round again & count pulses & respirations & note temperature. If a very sick patient in the middle of the day also take pulse etc The number of visits depending on the need & the competency of the nurse. I like introducing lint into wounds (such simple ones as an incised abcess of the breast) with the probe, because if I take trouble enough I can do it without hurting the patient, much to the patient's surprise. The other day Mr & Mrs Marvin called to see me with Mrs & Miss Callender - I enjoyed their visit - [*160*] [*1652*]I was to day feeling the need of a little change of air & scene so that the visit was most opportune. Mr Morse is working away desperately at the bust of you, he feels as if he would get on famously if he could only catch a glimpse of you. Now might not you come to Boston on your way to Chesterfield, ride up in the open horse-cars (a very pleasant ride) to see me, & [only] also give Mr[s] Morse the benefit of a sitting. How I wish we could get [the] Mrs Stafford in here, the [*161*] [*1653*]patients get most excellent care -- I have great confidence in Dr Berlin & in the attending physicians. I do not want her to come for a month, because Dr Berlin has just gone away for a vacation. I fear no mere visiting once a day if a dicta will do her any good - She needs hygienic treatment - Massage ( a [woman] works here every day on the patients who need rubbing & massage) - feeding up (I have never yet seen a patient whom we could not make eat, appetite or not, by aid of beef tea & milk.) perfect rest, & [???] treatment. Dr. Berlin is a learned, charming woman of 28 - she takes advanced views, gives no medicine at all in some cases & if any few at a time [simple] but efficient. She is perfectly unaffected very intelligent & has been thoroughly trained. She is a Russian. Please give my love to Mrs Whitman & remember me to Colonel Whitman, this afternoon when driving with Mr Marvin I thought of the pleasant drives I have had with Colonel Whitman. Yours affectionately Beatrice C Gilchrist If it were not for records accumulating mountains high I should have time to write to my friends. [1654] [*162*]& "The Faithful Lovers" which took every one. Walk in Miller was there (I can't spell his name) & lots more. This morning being Sunday I took my skates to the Park The wind was high & whirled us about fantastically ladies seated in wicker chairs were pushed rapidly along the Pond smooth icy surface ty their gentlemen escorts, tall men kissed the ice or sprawled full length on their backs, while often flew by like swallows; all this with a church spire peeping behind hills dapled with snow & sunshine what more inspiriting than this And now dear Walt goodbye for the present Herbert H. Gilchrist [*THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS*] 112 Madison Avenue New York February 2nd 1879 Dear darling Walt I read your long piece in the Philadelphia Times with ever so much interest & with especial del???] the delicately told bit about the dear old Pond, artistic, because so true. I know that it will please you to hear that I have gained tenfold facility with my brush since the autumn. it has agreed uncommonly well with me having enlisted under such an experienced & [ab???] painter as Chase; as a manipulator of the brush he agreed by the [???????] (Eaton) to have no rival I may yet be able to paint a head of you in one sitting 1655that will do justice to you. Three of my pictures are nicely busy at the Water Colour Exhibition Academy of Design, the first time that I have exhibited in New York. We had two & three engagements every night - (with one [????]) last week & go to Wm Croley to night. Your Friend John Burroughs [came] called last Wednesday came to try Turkish baths for his malarial trouble but it seemed to bring on his attacks of neuralgia worse I am sorry that I can report but poorly of his health, so painfully excruciating was his neuralgia about his arm at times that a Dr was sent for & morphine injected in his wrist but I am glad to say he reported himself a little better. with the hopes that you will come & give the lecture on Lincoln this winter, why not, confound it, it would be most interesting. I will offer we go to Miss Booths receptions Saturday evening, they are gay & amusing, met Mr. Bliss the gentleman that talked like "a house afire" one Sunday at your house last winter you remember. Last Wednesday I Mother Giddy & Kate Hillard went to Wm Bigelow's reception Mrs. H. was asked to recite & she recited the Swineherd (Anderson's) charmingly 1656children housekeeps. I think Boston a very beautiful city. The Public Gardens & Commons is the busiest part sloping down from the Gilt-domed State-house on Beacon hill, threaded by paths in all directions, traversed [?] the business men the fine-ladies the beggars etc. etc. One broad sloping path is given up to the boys who want to coast, [a] temporary wooden bridges being thrown over the cross paths. Then crossing South Bay to South Boston is a beautiful walk I take from one to four times 33 Warrenton St. Feb 16 1879 Dear Mr. Whitman, Although not in word I have thanked you for your letter & papers by enjoying them thoroughly -- Down at this Dispensary we work just as hard as at the Hospital, but our spare minutes are our own& (no records to write out) our work is under our own control; we are out in fresh air half the day [*181*] [*1857*] sometimes half the night. Making intimate acquaintance with all sorts of people & places & with far distant parts of Boston. We have all the responsibility that it is good for young doctors to have i.e. in all difficult or obscure or dangerous cases we are obliged to call in older heads & are obliged to report verbally to the visiting physician of the month all our cases & our treatment. Only two students live at the Dispensary -- Dr Wiley (the colored Philadelphia student you saw) & myself. In tastes we have much in common & on the whole I prefer to live with her rather than with any of the other students. We share rooms. We have a bedroom, a drug-room, a treatment room -- waiting room for patients & take our meals in the kitchen. A widow woman with two [*182*] [*1658*] a day. South Boston looks rather dingy, it is inhabited mostly by artisans & mill hands & [sailo] fishermen, but walking up 3rd St. as you cross the [nu] lettered streets A B. C. D etc you look down upon the harbor, on bright days bright blue & a few sails to be seen -- at sunset the colors of course are reflected gorgeous. Somehow or other the sea looks doubly beautiful set in [?] S. Boston. Far over in the West End too we [*183*] [*1659*] If I were not too lazy to write & you too fatigued to read, ! [more] I have lots more [?] to tell you about! Poor England is reaping fast the miseries to be expected from such a government & foreign policy!have patients. Last Tuesday I had twins all by myself, only one however was born alive, the other had been dead a week. How delightful that you are feeling so much better. Shall you not be coming to Boston sometime before I leave 1st June. The Boston I know is not the Boston I knew in books, I am as far off from that as if I lived in England, is not the "hub" I was reminded of that last Sunday when I had time for once to go to church & went to hear Mr EE Hale preach & went home to dinner with him. I do not like him or his preaching - he is affected, I think inwardly & outwardly. I like his daughter, whom we knew in Philadelphia. She is a clever young artist. Dr. Wiley is very popular with his patients, far more so than I. Please remember me to all the Staffords and give my especial love to Mrs Stafford. Also to Mrs Whitman Yours affectionately Beatrice C Jilchrist 1660THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS We like our new house so much & I am sure that you would You must come and stay with us & stroll on Hampstead Heath, & ride down into London upon an Omnibus & sit to some good sculptor here in London (Boem) say. And you yourself could make arrangements with the publisher with remembrances to friends Herbert H Gilchrist. 1663 a large thin flat volume a fanciful, but-as inexspensive as possible a cover written in gold on blue, a waterlily [???] : but I could think this over. I will design fanciful tailpieces to be woven in with the text. [The] as a frontispiece the drawing that I gave you retouched by me and reproduced by the Typographic Etching Company 23 Farrington Street London E. C. All these are only suggestions which I am prepared to execute in right-earnest thought. I read your letter to Mother with interest. Keats Corner England 12 Well Road Hampstead London November 30th 1880 My dear Walt Your post card came a handsome little time ago I was pleased to get it to hear of your being well & with your friends. I have been extremely busy seeing after the new edition of my fathers book; the work of seeing such a richly illustrated "edition de luxe" through the press was enormous but it is done: the binders are now doing there work & next Tuesday the reviewers will be doing theirs & I 1661defy them to find any fault with the book. I daresay you think it "tall" talk, but I think that it is the most perfectly gotten up book that I ever have seen. My mother has written an admirable memoir of my father at the end of the second vol: & a graceful preface. POND MUSINGS' by WALT WHITMAN I thought that this was to be the title of your prose volume. I will undertake the illustrations choosing the paper (hand made) everything except the expense of reproducing: etc.: I should say London is a place to have things executed in: if you wish to give photo: they must be drawn by an artist and reproduced no photo ever looked well in a book yet! They haven't decorative imprtance and don't blend with type. I should suggest that we should imitate the artistic size & style of your earliest edition of Leaves ofefficaciously too, I can tell you, such scrubbing & cleaning as you never saw the like, we three I say, are alone at {?} Corner; cool sitting here in our long drawing-room (hung with innumerable pictures as of yore) although it has been scorchingly hot this past month. The morning I spent sketching on Hampstead Heath which is lovely just now, all the may-trees are in full bloom the gorse & broom are a blaze of yellow, the rooks fly constantly by a quarter of a mile (seemingly) overhead, the sly fellows giving some side like dart when you look up at them even at that height. I am painting one of them so I have to look up pretty often. In the early morning the nightingale sings oh so sweetly long trills & [?] in the most accomplished manner. Last Wednesday week Miss Ellen Terry, whose name you are doubtless familiar with as being the leading actress in London, well she called upon me to ask my advice or opinion of a drawing [?] with my fathers book. Ellen Terry expressed herself highly interested in our house pictures, decorations and so forth, her manner was a little st]?] but graceful to the extreme and you could in keeping out of this theatric manner a kind good heart oh so kind. I feel as if I would do anything for her 1665her manners were so winning "Will you come to the stage entrance of the Lyceum some day soon and you shall have flatts for two, now will you come do." Were her last work a grace. I called on her at Kensington last week returning the drawing, and I was so charmed with two beautiful children of hers, a tall fair girl a pretty mixture of shyness and self possession that quite son me, she too I should fancy will be a great actress some day she had such a bright face, the boy, master Ted was nice too. Well I gaven Ellen Terry a proof of a drawing that I have just completed for D' Bucks book. Keats Corner 1881 Well Road Hampstead England June 5th Sunday afternoon 5. P. M. My dear Walt You don't write me a letter nor take any notice of my magnificent offers concerning "Pond Musings' etc: however I will forgive you this oft repeted offence. I often think of you, very often of America and things generally there and nearly always with pleasure. My mother is away staying with Beatrice in Edinburgh city recruiting her health which has most sadly needed it of late. So I and Grace & a new Scotch lassie, one Margaret who officiates as servant most 1664 2/3THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS mobid, don't you think & one shuts the book up with a feeling that in some respects, one Carlyle, is enough in the world: & yet in some respects a million wouldn't be too many. I often think of your remark to us one day that tolerance is the surest quality of the world. Interested in those Boston scraps you sent my mother, you have always been pretty well received in Boston have you not, I mean in the Emerson days. Pity that when Emerson is no more, that there will be no fine portrait of him in existence, there was a nobility stamped upon his face that I never saw the like of, and 1667 216 a job I got from Buxton through Buxton Forman a great friend of Buck's, done con amore on my past. This drawing has been beautifully reproduced by the [?] new photo intaglio - process. I hope Dr. Buck will like it but I should not expect great things from him in that line, judging from the twopenny hapenny little pen & ink sketch by Waters which he sent over in the first instance; However [the a] Forman rescued him from that & so far he has been guided by his friends whether he will when he sees my drawing [the] we neither of us know but both feel to have done our best in the matter. 1686 [??] THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESSI [told] said that Ellen Terry must ask for you when she goes to America; which she contemplates some day. I have sold the last drawing I made in New York of you for [pounds] 10.10[s] to Buxton Forman $50 odd. Church bells have just comments chiming in the distance, a sound I like better than the parsons. I hear that the young American artists are doing capitally filling their pockets. My cousin Sidney Thomas is or was in America, a good deal lionized I understand. If at any time you favour me with a letter let it be a letter and not a post card please. I have been reading Carlyle's Reminiscences good stuff in them brilliant touches but dreadfully THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS which should have been caught and stamped forever on canvass. We all see something of the Formans & all like them, they have so much character, rather unused in literary folk of the lighter sort I fancy, but there is something very fresh and original about Forman. Nice children they have too. Miss Blind is bringing out a volume of poems why will people all imagine they [???] can write poetry? William Rossetti is writing a hundred sonnets writes one a day, one about John Brown is not bad: and many are instructive, but are in no sense poems. I am going down to tea & must not keep Grace waiting any longer love to you Herbert H Gilchristlikeness of you, just as you used to sit at tea with us at 1929. N 22nd St. Now I am going out for a stroll on Hampstead Heath. I have just come in from a long ramble over the Heaths a lovely soft spring day, innumerable birds in full song. I think J. B. is right - when he says that your birds are more plaintive than ours - its natures way of compensating as for a loss of sunshine; what would England be without the merry lark the very embodiment of cheeriness. Are not the Carlyle & Emerson letters interesting it seems to me to be one of the most beautiful and pathetic things in literature [?] fondness for E. But all Englishmen I must tell you are not grumblers like Carlyle he stands quite alone in that quality look at Darwin! Should be grateful for another post card with all love Herb Gilchrist THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Kents Corner Well Road April 29th 183. Sunday morning Hampstead N. London England My dear Walt Your card to hand last night with its sad account of dear Mrs Staffords' health but what the doctor says is cheering. I wonder though what the doctor would call good weather mild spring I suppose. Very glad my dear old Walt to see your strong familiar handwriting again it does one good, its so individual that it is next to seeing [your face] you. Right glad to hear of your good health, had an idea that you were not so well again this winter. John Buroughs was very violent against my intaglio on the 1668other hand Alma Tadema - our great painter here liked it very much. I take violent criticism pretty philosophically now that I see how unreliable it nearly always is. John Burroughs has got a fixed idea about your personality and that is that the top of your head is a foot high and any portrait that doesn't develope the "dome" is no portrait - curious what eyes a man may have for everything except a picture. I finished lately a life size portrait of James Simmons JP a hunting [(???)] squire of the old school such a fine old fellow. My portrait represents him standing firmly, in a scarlet hunting coat well stained with many a wet chaise his great whip tucked under his arm whilst buttoning on his left glove white buckskin trousers in shade relieving the scarlet coat black velvet hunting cap dark rich blue background to qualify and cool the scarlet. I wish you could see it. Then I have painted a subject "The Good Gray Poet's Gift" I have long meant to build up something of you from my studies adding colour. You play a prominent past in this picture - seated at table bending over a nosegay of flowers poetizing before presenting them to mother I am standing up bending over the tea-pot with a kettle filling it up, opposite you sits Giddy out of the window a pretty vain of the Cannon place Hampstead: Mater [likes] thinks it a pretty picture and a good 1669