LETTER LVII

I have just been sauntering in our little but 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 your little bit of ground—Then we have filled our large window with flowers in pots which make the room smell as delicious as a garden. Giddy is assiduous in keeping them well watered & tended.—Welcome was your postcard—with the little rain-bird’s 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 England, & our nest therein? Yes, I have received & have enjoyed all the papers & cuttings—dearly like what you said of Carlyle. Everyone here is speaking bitterly of the harsh judgments & sarcastic descriptions of people in the “reminiscenses.” But I know that at bottom his heart was genial and good & that he wrote those in a miserable mood—& never looked at them again 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, it will be good. I wish he had possessed as much power with the brush when he was in America as he has now—he is making very great progress in mastery of the technique. 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 Lesley is coming from Paris, where she is studying art in good earnest, at the beginning of May, & then will come and spend a few days with us. Welcome are American friends! The Buxton Forman’s took tea with us last week & we had pleasant talk of you & of Dr. Bucke. Mrs. Forman is a sincere, sympathetic, motherly woman whom you would like. The Rossetti’s too have been to see us—we didn’t think William 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 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—& 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 it)—plenty of merry-go-rounds—& enjoyment of the pure air & sunshine, & such sights, more than they know. The light is failing, dearest friend; so with love from us all, good-bye.

Anne Gilchrist.

Friendliest greeting to your brother & sister & to Hattie & Jessie when you write & to the Staffords.

LETTER LVIII

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 efficaciously too, I can tell you (such scrubbing & cleaning as you never saw the like) we three, I say, are alone at Keats 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 spend 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 & roulades in the most accomplished manner.

Last Wednesday 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 connected with my father’s book. Ellen Terry expressed herself highly interested in our house, pictures, decorations and so forth. Her manner was a little stagey, but graceful to the extreme, and you could see peeping out of this theatric manner a kind, good heart, oh, so kind, I feel as if I would do anything for her, her manners were so winning. “Will you come to the stage entrance of the Lyceum some day soon and you shall have stalls for two; now will you come? Do.” Were her last words to 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 won me. She too I should fancy will be a great actress some day, she has such a bright face. The boy, Master Ted, was nice too.

Well, I gave Ellen Terry a proof of a drawing that I have just completed for Dr. Bucke’s book—a job I got through Buxton Forman, a great friend of Bucke’s, done con amore on my part. This drawing has been beautifully reproduced by the new photo intaglio-process. I hope Dr. Bucke 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, Forman rescued him from that & so far he has been guided by his friend. Whether he will when he sees my drawing, we neither of us know; but both feel to have done our best in the matter. I 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 £10. 10s to Buxton Forman ($50. odd). Church bells have just commenced 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 postcard please. I have been reading Carlyle’s reminiscences—good stuff in them, brilliant touches, but dreadfully morbid, don’t you think? & one shuts the book up with a feeling that in some respect 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 rarest quality in the world.

Interested in those Boston scraps you send 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 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 which should have been caught and stamped forever on canvas.

We all see something of the Formans & all like them; they have so much character, rather unusual 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. Gilchrist.

LETTER LIX

Your welcome letter to hand. I have longed for a word from you—could not write myself[37]—was stricken dumb—nay, there is nothing but silence for me still. Herby wrote to Mrs. 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 Frederick Holland, with whose wife you had some conversation. Indeed all that sympathy and warm & true words of love & sorrow & highest admiration & esteem for my darling could do to comfort me I have had—and most & best from America. And 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 whit discouraged & has no need to be, for he is making great progress—works hard, loves his work & is of the stuff where of 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. Buxton Forman, & his wife are very warm, staunch friends of Herby’s.

Please 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.

LETTER LX

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 outstrip the hares. Percy and Norah are spending the winter in London (at Kensington)—and 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 letter she once wrote you, how much she loved the Swiss ladies with whom she made her home while in Berne? A more tender & beautiful love and sorrow than that with which they cherish the memory of her never grew in any 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 & brother. How are Mr. Marvin & Mr. Burroughs? Best love from us all. Good-bye, dear Friend.

Anne Gilchrist.

LETTER LXI

Herby went to David Bognes[38] about a week ago: he himself 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 husband’s first literary venture & behaved honourably. 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 in 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 chronological arrangement, if change at all there 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 sometimes 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 have 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 my dear Gabriel would not have been himself.” Edward Carpenter’s father, too, is gone, but he at a ripe age without disease—sank 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?

Herby is well and 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 a sky-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 greetings to your brother & sister & Hattie & Jessie.

Do you ever see Mr. Marvin? If so, give our love, we hope to see him one day.

LETTER LXII

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 something in it that takes hold of me & that seems to be a kind of natural background or substratum 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 favourites are the portrait taken about 30 without coat 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 & had such happy hours with. The second copy of book & 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 my 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 my mother’s sister, are to me fine, lovable samples of American women—in whom, I mean, I detect, like the distinctive aroma of a flower, something special—that is 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. His summer work was down in Warwickshire, making sketches—& very charming ones they are, of George Eliot’s native scenes—one of a garden-nook—up steep, old, worn stone steps bordered with flowers that is enticing—it will make a lovely background 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 & 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 Bogne’s bankruptcy. Did I tell you that among our friends one of your warmest admirers is Henry Holmes, the great violinist (equal [to] Joachim some think—we among them). Per. & wife & little grandson all well. My love to brother & sister & to Hattie [&] Jessie. Good-bye, dear Walt. I hope to write more & better soon.

Anne Gilchrist.

Greetings to the Staffords.

LETTER LXIII

Feb. 13. I wonder if you will like a true story of Lady Dilke that I heard the other day—I do: It was before her marriage. She was a handsome young heiress, a daring horsewoman, fond of hunting. There was a man, weakly & of good position, who had behaved very basely & cruelly to a young girl in her neighbourhood, & when (as is the case in England) half the county was assembled on the hunting field, Lady D. faced him & said in a voice that could be heard afar, “Sir you are a black-guard, & if these gentlemen had the right spirit in them they would horsewhip you.” He looked at her with effrontery & made a mocking bow. “But,” she continued, “since they won’t, I will”—and she cut him across the face with her riding whip; upon which he turned and rode off the field, like a dog with his tail between his legs, & reappeared in that neighbourhood no more. She was a woman much beloved—died at the birth of her first child (from too much chloroform having been given her). Her husband was heart-broken. I see you, too, are having floods. With us it pours five days out of seven, & so in Germany & France. We have made the acquaintance of Arabella Buckley, who has just written an interesting article about Darwin, whom she knew well, for the Century. She says his was the most entirely beautiful & perfect nature she ever came in contact with. How I wish we could have a glimpse of each other, dear Friend—half an hour talk—nay, a good long look & a hand-shake. Herby is overhead painting in his studio—such a pleasant room. How is John Burroughs? We owe him a letter & thanks for a good art. on Carlyle. Love to you, dearest friend.

Hearty remembrances to your brother & sister & Hattie & Jessie.

A. G.

LETTER LXIV

Very glad, my dear old Walt, to see your strong familiar handwriting again; it does one good, it’s so individual that it is next to seeing you. Right glad to hear of your good health—had an idea that you were not so well again this winter. John Burroughs was very violent against my intaglio; on the other hand, Alma Tadema—our great painter here—liked it very much. I take violent criticism pretty philosophically, now that I see how unreliable it nearly always is. John Burroughs has got a fixed idea about your personality, and that is that the top of your head is a foot high and any portrait that doesn’t develop the “dome” is no portrait.—Curious what eyes a man may have for everything except a picture. I finished lately a life-size portrait of James Simmons, J.P., a hunting (fox) squire of the old school—such a fine old fellow. My portrait represents him standing firmly, in a scarlet hunting-coat well stained with many a wet chase, his great whip tucked under his arm whilst buttoning on his left glove, white buckskin trousers in shade relieving the scarlet coat, black velvet hunting cap, dark rich blue background to qualify and cool the scarlet. I wish you could see it. Then I have painted a subject “The Good Gray Poet’s Gift.” I have long meant to build up something of you from my studies, adding colour. You play a prominent part in this picture—seated at table bending over a nosegay of flowers, poetizing, before presenting them to mother. I am standing up bending over the tea-pot, with the kettle, filling it up; opposite you sits Giddy; out of the window a pretty view of Cannon place, Hampstead. Mater thinks it a pretty picture and a good likeness of you, just as you used to sit at tea with us at 1729 N. 22nd St. Now I am going out for a stroll on Hampstead Heath. Have just come in from a long ramble over the Heaths—a lovely soft spring day, innumerable birds in full song. I think J. B. is right when he says that your birds are more plaintive than ours—it’s nature’s way of compensating us for a loss of sunshine: what would England be without the merry lark, the very embodiment of cheeriness. Are not the Carlyle & Emerson letters interesting? It seems to me to be one of the most beautiful and pathetic things in literature, C’s fondness for E. But all Englishmen, I must tell you, are not grumblers like Carlyle; he stands quite alone in that quality—look at Darwin!

I should be grateful for another postcard. With all love,

Herb. Gilchrist.

LETTER LXV

You cannot think, dear friend, what a pleasure it was to have a whole big letter from you (not that I despise Postcards—they are good stop-gaps, but not the real thing). Yes, I have & prize the article on the Hebrew Scriptures. How I wish you could make up your mind to spend your summer holiday with us.

I am still struggling along, striving to say something which, if I can say it to my mind, will be useful—will clear away a little of the rubbish that hides you from men’s eyes. I hear the “Eminent Women Series” is having quite a large sale in America. Good-bye. Love to Mrs. Whitman. Greetings to your brother. Love from us all to you.

A. Gilchrist.

LETTER LXVI

Lazy me, that have been thinking letters to you instead of writing them! We have Dr. Bucke’s book at last; could not succeed in buying one at Türbner’s—I believe they all sold directly—but he has sent us one. There are some things in it I prize very highly—namely, Helen Price’s “Memoranda” and Thomas A. Gere’s. These I like far better than any personal reminiscences of you I have ever read & I feel much drawn to the writers of them. Also your letter to Mrs. Price from the Hospitals, dear Friend. That makes one hand-in-hand with you—then & there—& gives one a glimpse of a very beautiful friendship. But why & why did Dr. Bucke set himself to counteract that beneficient law of nature’s by which the dust tends to lay itself? And carefully gathering together again all the rubbish stupid or malevolent that has been written of you, toss it up in the air again to choke and blind or disgust as many as it may? What a curious piece of perversity to mistake this for candour & a judicial spirit.[39] Then again, how do I hate all that unmeaning, irrelevant clatter about what Rabelais or Shakespeare or the ancients & their times tolerated in the way of coarseness or plainness of speech. As if you wanted apologizing for or could be apologized for on that ground! If these poems are to be tolerated, I, for one, could not tolerate them. If they are not the highest lesson that has yet been taught in refinement & purity, if they do not banish all possibility of coarseness of thought & feeling, there would be nothing to be said for them. But they do: I am as sure of that as of my own existence. When will men begin to understand them?

We have had pleasant glimpses of several American friends this summer—of Kate Hillard for instance, who, by the bye narrowly escaped a bad accident just at our door—the harness broke & the cab came down on the horse & frightened him so that he bolted—struck the cab against a lamp-post (happily, else it would have been worse)—overturned them & it—but when they crawled out no worse harm was done than a few cuts from the glass—& Kate & her friend behaved very pluckily, & we had a pleasant evening together after all. Then there was Arthur Peterson, looking much as in the old Philadelphia days: and Emma & Annie Lazarus—who, owing to some letters of introduction from James the novelist, have had a very gay time indeed—been quite lionized—and last, not least, Mr. Dalton Dorr, the curator of the Pennsylvania Museum in Fairmount Park—whom we all liked much. He is enjoying his visit here with all his heart—is a great enthusiast for our old Gothic Cathedrals, and for everything beautiful—but says there is nothing such a source of unceasing wonder & delight as riding about London & over the bridges &c. on the top of an omnibus watching the endless flow of people—it is indeed a kind of human Mississippi or Niagara.

The young folks are busy packing up to start for the seaside. Herby wants a background for a picture in which green turf & trees and all the richness of vegetation come down to the very edge of the sea and I seem to remember such a place near Lynn Regis, where I was thirty years ago, when my eldest child was born, so they are going to look it up. We hear the heat is very tremendous in America this year. I hope you are as well as ever able to stand it & enjoy it? I wonder where you are. Friendly greetings to Mr. & Mrs. Whitman & Hattie & Jessie & the Staffords. Love to you, dear Friend, from us all.

Anne Gilchrist.

My little book on Mary Lamb just out—will send you a copy in a day or two.

LETTER LXVII

Hythe. Kent. Oct. 21. Not having felt very well the last month or two, and Giddy also seeming to need a little bracing up, we came down to this ancient town by the sea—one of the Cinque Ports—on Wednesday, and much we like it—a fine open sea—a delicious “briny odour”—and inland much that is curious and interesting—for this part of the Kentish Coast—so near to France—has innumerable old castles, forts, moats, traces everywhere of centuries of warfare and of means of defence against our great neighbour. It is a fine hilly, woody country, too, and very picturesque these gray massive ruins, many of them used now as farm houses, look. The men of Kent are very proud of their country and are reckoned a fine race—tall, muscular, ruddy-complexioned, and often too with thick, tawny-red beards—curious how in our little island the differences of race-stock are still so discernible—keep along this same coast to the west only about a couple of hundred miles & you come to such a different type—dark—blackest and Cornish men.—I get a nice letter now & then from John Burroughs. I also saw this summer two women doctors who were very kind & good friends to my darling Bee—Drs. Pope—twin sisters from Boston, whom it did me good to see. They work hard—have a good practice—& say they don’t know what a day’s illness means so far as they themselves are concerned. They tell me also that the women doctors are doing capital work in America—and that one of them, who was with dear Beatrice at the Penn. Med. Col., Dr. Alice Bennett, is the efficient head of the woman’s department of a large lunatic asylum. We are getting on in England too—but the field where English women doctors find the most work & the best position is India, where as the women are not allowed by their male relatives to be attended by men, the mortality was immense.—Herby has taken a better studio than our house afforded—both as to light & size—& finds the advantage great. I expect he is having a delightful walk this brilliant morning with the “Hampstead Tramps”—of whom I think I have told you. They often walk fifteen miles or so on Sunday morning.

Such a glorious afternoon it has been by the sea—sapphire colour—the air brisk & elastic, yet soft. To-morrow Gran goes home & I shall be all alone here.—I hear of “Specimen Days” in a letter from Australia—there will be a large audience for you there some day, dear Friend. I like what John Burroughs has been writing about Carlyle much. We have had nothing but stupidities of late about him here—but there will come a great reaction from all this abuse, I have no doubt—he did put so much gall in his ink sometimes, human nature can’t be expected to take it altogether meekly. I hope you received my little book safely. I should be a hypocrite if I pretended not to care whether you found patience to read it—for I grew to love Mary & Charles Lamb so much during my task that I want you to love them too—& to see what a beautiful friendship was theirs with Coleridge.

How are Mr. & Mrs. Whitman and Hattie & Jessie? Send me a few words soon.

Good-bye, dearest Friend.

Ann Gilchrist.

LETTER LXVIII

Herby found the little bit of gray cloth very useful—but one day save him an old suit. Your figure in the picture is, I think, a fair suggestion of one aspect of you; but not, could not of course be, an adequate portrait. He will never rest till he has done his best to achieve that. As soon as he can afford it (for it is a very slow business indeed for a young artist to make money in England, though when he does begin he is better paid than in America) he means to run over to see you. He says he should like always to spend his winters in New York. I say how very highly I prize that last slip you sent me, “A backward glance on my own road”? It both corroborates & explains much that I feel very deeply.—If you are seeing Mrs. Whitman, please say her letter was a pleasure & that I shall write again before very long. I feel as if this letter would never find you—be sure & let us know your whereabouts.

Remembrance & love.

Good-bye, dear Walt.

Anne Gilchrist.

LETTER LXIX

Who do you think came to see us on Sunday? Professor Dowden.[40] And I know not when I have set eyes on a more beautiful personality. I think you would be as much attracted towards him as I was. It was he who told me (full of enthusiasm) of the Poems in Harper’s which I had not seen or heard of. We had a very happy two or three hours together, talking of you & looking through Blake’s drawings. He is a tall man, complexion tanned & healthy, nose finely modelled, dark eyes with plenty of life & meaning in them, hair grayish—I should think he was between forty & fifty—but says his father is still a fine hale old man.

Herby disappointed again this year of getting anything into the R. Academy.

I think I like the idea of the shanty, if you have any one to take good care of you, to cook nicely, keep all neat & clean &c. I wonder if I have ever been in Mickle St. I, still busy, still hammering away to see if I can help those that “balk” at “Leaves of Grass”. Perhaps you will smile at me—at any rate it bears good fruit to me—I seem to be in a manner living with you the while.

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

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

Anne Gilchrist.

LETTER LXX

The notion [that] one is going to write a nice long letter is fatal to writing at all. And so I mean to scribble something, somehow, a little oftener & make up in quantity for quality! For after all the great thing, the thing one wants, is to meet—if not in the flesh—then in the spirit. A word will do it. I am getting on—my heart is in my work—& though I have been long about it, it won’t be long—but I think & hope it will be strong. Quite a sprinkling of American friends—some new ones this spring—among them Mr. & Mrs. Pennell[41] from Philadelphia—whom you know—we like them well—hope to see them again & again. Also Miss Keyse (her sister married Emerson’s son) from Concord, and the Lesleys—Mary Lesley has married & gone to the West—St. Paul—has just got a little son.

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

Anne Gilchrist.

LETTER LXXI

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

Love from us all, dear friend.

A. Gilchrist.

Grace & Herby well & busy when I left.

LETTER LXXII

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 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 are signs of the flow—of a steadily gathering great wave, 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. 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 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 read the Poems who had not else done so.—Percy & Norah and Archie, now grown a very sturdy active little fellow, are coming to spend Xmas with us, which is a great pleasure.

I am deep in Froude’s last volumes of “Carlyle’s Life in London”. Folks are grumbling that they have had enough & too much of Carlyle & his grumblings and sarcasms. 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 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 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 is what Herby is painting & I think he will make a very jolly little picture out of it. I have been much a prisoner to the 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 and 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 & Jessie—there is a fellow student of Giddy’s at the Guild Hall music school who so reminds her of Hattie.

Love from us all, dear friend. Most from me.

Anne Gilchrist.

LETTER LXXIII

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 and fro daily on the great ferry boats & enjoy the beautiful broad river & the sky & the 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 can’t tell you what a dear, affectionate, reasonable, companionable 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—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 and active to the last—& now he is gone—& his eldest brother died only two months before him.—I cannot help grieving over public affairs too—never in my lifetime 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 by the shouts of the bystanders on shore—the newspapers &c. prospering very ill. A government that tries perpetually how to do it and how not to do it at the same moment! The best comfort is that I do not think 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 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 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 your 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 and broad valleys—and the storms travelling 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. I 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. It is so very hard to stir up anything 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.